- October 5, 2024
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Joseph Frank Bova, the man charged with first degree murder in the Feb. 21, 2013 shooting of Mobil gas station clerk Zuheily Rosado, has at times refused to take the medications prescribed for his schizophrenia and walked out on one psychiatrist charged with evaluating him, his attorney said in a July 5 pretrial hearing.
Bova appeared before Circuit Judge Matthew Foxman for the July 5 hearing. His psychiatric evaluations haven't yet been completed, defense attorney Raymond Warren said. Foxman scheduled Bova for an Aug. 2 hearing.
This was Bova's first appearance before Foxman, who called Bova up to the witness stand and asked him how he was doing, and whether he's been taking his medications. Bova replied that he has, and then said that the meds "make me feel kind of sick." When Foxman asked him where the meds make him feel sick, Bova replied, "My stomach."
Bova, now 28, was arrested Sept. 12, 2013 in Boca Raton, Florida, where detectives found him living out of his car. They searched it and found a SCCY 9-mm semiautomatic handgun that ballistics tests identified as the handgun used in the murder.
Detectives who questioned Bova at the time fun him lucid and capable of answering questions, according to a Sept. 14, 2013 press conference. He had no known history of mental illness and no known connection to Rosado.
But Bova has since been diagnosed with a schizophrenic disorder, and Circuit Judge David Walsh has in the past found Bova incompetent to stand trial and ordered him to a state psychiatric hospital for treatment and evaluation.
But last year, in a July 15 competency hearing, Walsh found Bova competent to proceed to trial after a psychologist testified that he'd seen signs of malingering and that although Bova is schizophrenic, he understood the charges against him and had said explicitly that he hoped to be found incompetent so that his case would be dismissed.
