Hector David Jr., 'Power Rangers Samurai' Green Ranger, Sentenced In Battery Case After Guilty Plea
Don’t shove old people to the ground, even in an argument.
There are plenty of corny lines that could be said to lead this off, but this is somehow the least bad thing a Power Rangers Samurai actor has gotten in legal trouble for. Hector David Jr., who played that team’s Green Samurai Ranger Mike for 46 episodes in the long-running Power Rangers series, pled guilty Wednesday in a Canyon County, Idaho court to misdemeanor battery after assaulting a man while in the state last year.
Legal documents reveal he was subsequently sentenced to 180 days in prison, placed on two years of supervised probation and ordered to complete 100 hours of community service. The judge suspended 135 days of the prison sentence, leaving only 45 days necessary to serve but would need to avoid trouble once out or else the time would be re-added.
The offending incident happened in July, when he shoved a walker-using elderly man he was arguing over a parking spot with to the ground in Nampa. The man did not sustain any serious injury. David Jr. drove off in his truck, but cops later identified him with help from the community. A judge issued an arrest warrant, hitting national news. Prosecutors brought the battery charges by the end of the month.
Power Rangers Samurai encompassed the eighteenth and nineteenth seasons of the series aired from February 2011 to December 2012. David Jr. would go on to make the same extended silent cameo in both edits of the Power Rangers Super Megaforce season finale “Legendary Battle” in 2014. He was most recently seen in the Netflix Christmas film The Merry Gentlemen, released this past November and also starring Chad Michael Murray, Britt Robertson, Marla Sokoloff, Michael Gross, Beth Broderick and Maria Canals-Barrera.
In March 2017, Ricardo Medina Jr., who played the cursed Nighlok Deker, was sentenced to 6 years on a count of voluntary manslaughter stemming from the 2015 stabbing of his roommate. He served about half of it, released in 2020 possibly due to operational complications from the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2017, Rene Naufahu, who played Mentor Ji, pled guilty to six charges of indecent assault of his acting students while Samurai was airing. He was sentenced in January 2018 to a year of house arrest. In May, original Mighty Morphin Red Ranger and second Gold Zeo Ranger Austin St. John, real name Jason Geiger, accepted a plea deal for conspiring to commit wire fraud against the U.S. government regarding COVID-19 PPP relief funds. The 2022 arrest that kicked it off made him unavailable to partake in the 30th anniversary special, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once & Always, which was released in April 2023.
Sources: TMZ, Big Red Nerd