Pablo Lyle’s career was in full swing. He was the handsome boy of Mexican soap operas, the “new heartthrob.”
But everything was cut short one day in March 2019, when during a traffic altercation in the city of Miami, Florida, he punched Juan Ricardo Hernández, a man of Cuban origin who died days later due to trauma to the head.
This Tuesday a Miami jury found Lyle guilty of manslaughter for the death of the 63-year-old man. The jury did not believe that he had acted in self-defense because he feared for the welfare of his family, as the defense alleged.
The 35-year-old actor might face up to 15 years in prison.
The actor’s trial has aroused great interest in the Spanish-language media in the US and Latin America. But what had become of Lyle’s career before the incident that changed his life forever? And why has so much attention been paid to his case?
Pablo Lyle’s defense argued that the actor acted in self-defense when confronting Hernández.
After his debut as an actor at the age of 16 in the current youth production in Mexico, “Código postal” (2006), Lyle participated in more than a dozen series television and filmsalso dabbling in modeling.
Born in the state of Sinaloa, showed up TV soaps like “The shadow of the past”, “My adorable curse”, “Heart that lies” and “Cachito de cielo”.
He also had credits in series such as “A lucky family”, “Once upon a time” and “Mirreyes vs Godínez”, as well as in the movie “Yankee”.
“He had been the youth actor in soap operas and he grew with the audience. Before this happened had many fans, even beyond Mexicobut it was not so well known by the general public“, explains Jossette Rivera, journalist and entertainment editor of the Univisión network in Miami.
Rivera believes that people pay a lot of attention to Lyle’s case because “he was a very good-looking actor who was aiming to be one of the starring leading men of soap operas in Mexico.”
In addition, he believes that there are people who see what happened as a case of “bad luck” what might have happened to them.
“Many of the famous Mexicans who have spoken regarding the case have done so by saying that Lyle is a very good person and that his life has changed because of a stupid reaction. It is the feeling that it might have happened to anyone,” says the journalist.
But Rivera also believes that part of the public’s interest in Lyle’s case has to do with the fact that it is an example of how overstepping the limits of the law in the United States has impact what in Some Latin American countries may not would have.
“In Latin America there is the impression that some rich and famous believe that they can somehow fix this type of situation, negotiating with the police, for example.”
“But here in the US these kinds of events have important consequences,” he says.
And that is part of the key to why this case has drawn so much attention from the Latin American public, says the journalist.
As for the attention paid by the Spanish-language media, Rivera says that “in the entertainment newsrooms, we knew that there was a lot of interest in news related to Pablo Lyle“.
“That’s why we’ve given him a lot of coverage. The audience wanted to know the details of the case and Lyle’s personal and professional life. And that’s what we’ve given them.”
The truth is that the attention of the public and the media is not over yet. In three weeks the actor will return to court once more to hear his sentence and once more his name will be in the headlines once more.
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