Man Accidentally Kills Woman After Being Teased for Face Tattoos

Football games have been known to lead to physical fights, however, only on extremely rare instances do these spats end with a murder. On January 11th, a group of family and friends had gathered to watch the Vikings play the 49ers. During the game, 32-year-old Zenas Farkarlun became upset when a man began making fun of his face tattoos. This prompted Farkarlun to retrieve a machete from his closet and threaten the man with it.

Farkarlun’s cousin, 39-year-old Cornella Roybal, attempted to step between the two men and was struck in the head by Farkarlun. Following punching his cousin, Farkalun proceeded to threaten everyone in the room and ordered everyone to relinquish their cell phones so no one could call the police.

Just before midnight, someone at the house made a call to the police and the man who allegedly got hit with the machete was taken to the hospital. When the police visited Roybal, they found her asleep with visible injuries on her face. Her fiancé reported hearing her snoring around midnight, however, at 6:30am he found her unresponsive and called paramedics. Roybal was pronounced dead on the scene. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Roybal died of head injuries and declared her death a homicide.

Farkarlun was arrested on January 16th by a Minneapolis SWAT team and denied his assault being the cause of her death, but that two other men had assaulted her after he’d left the house. On January 17th, Farkarlun was charged with second-degree unintentional murder, second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon, and robbery by the Ramsey County attorney’s office.

Farkarlun was previously convicted of second-degree assault in 2005, prohibited person in possession of a firearm in 2005, first-degree aggravated robbery in 2008 and first-degree aggravated robbery in 2013. He’s currently awaiting sentencing in a case of domestic assault by strangulation, with the victim being another cousin.