Antonio's crimes were poorly planned, fumblingly executed, and never violent. Each time, he pleaded guilty, served his time, and then quickly re-offended. In 1997, cops caught him breaking into a car in the crowded lot of Traz Powell Stadium during a high school football game. In January 1998, he sold weed to an undercover cop and was sentenced to another two years. "Every time life was getting back to normal, he got arrested," Ladonna remembers.
When tragedy struck again later that year, it wasn't Antonio's fault. While he was in jail, Ladonna gave birth to their second son, Anthony. But the child was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare type of cancer. Antonio was out in time to watch his son walk and then start to stumble as the cancer ate at the toddler's muscles. "He loved his kids," his sister Jennifer says. "He would have done anything for them."
Courtesy of Ladonna Florence
Antonio Andrew celebrates his son A.J.'s first birthday in 1995.
Michael E. Miller
The Redland house where Miami-Dade police ambushed the robbers.
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With no job to pay for Anthony's chemotherapy, Antonio turned back to crime. When cops pulled him over January 25, 2001, for a routine traffic stop, they found a silver 9mm pistol under his back seat. He was sentenced to three years. From jail, he gave Ladonna the phone number of his court-appointed guardian and told her to use his Opa-locka settlement money for Anthony's treatment. But the guardian told her the money was gone.
"My son's father never would have told me to call that man if Antonio had received that money," Ladonna says. "They stole it from him."
(New Times has contacted half a dozen lawyers listed in court records connected to the settlement, but all claimed not to be the guardian charged with keeping Antonio's funds or to know where the cash went. More details might emerge later this month when a probate court appoints someone to manage Antonio's estate.)
Antonio saw his son only once more. On February 6, 2002, a judge granted him furlough to visit Anthony, then 3 years old. His cancer had returned and become inoperable. As an armed guard waited outside the Miami Children's Hospital room, Antonio signed papers to take Anthony off life support. Then he sat with the comatose child until his two hours of furlough were up. Anthony died later that day.
When Antonio was released in 2004, the first thing he did was ask Ladonna for forgiveness. His mother had died from bone cancer while he was in prison. Ladonna had moved on. But the repeat felon promised to stay out of jail to help raise their surviving son, A.J.
For seven years, he kept his word. He found work as a nightclub bouncer; then he started his own business — a lawn-care service called the Rite Choice. He even began to take care of A.J., driving him to the mall to buy school clothes and teaching him to play basketball.
"For Antonio, seven years without going to jail was a miracle," Ladonna says. "I thought he had turned his life around."
Antonio Andrew's family always knew the instant he drove down the block. The windows would rattle from the bass blasting out of his car. Then he'd burst through the door, flashing his gold-toothed smile before crushing them with a bear hug. But when he arrived at his sister's house in Opa-locka one evening last May, he wasn't his usual self. He looked worried as he took off his shirt and tossed it aside. Then he asked his sister to go out and buy him a black T-shirt.
"What you need something black for?" Jennifer remembers asking. But she already knew the answer. She felt her stomach drop.
"I ran into some crackers," Antonio said vaguely. "They brought me in on something in Hialeah." Then he broke into that mile-wide smile and told his sister not to worry. When she saw him a week later, he was in better spirits. He talked about renting a house with three bedrooms — one for him, another for A.J., and one for her. When he dropped Jennifer off at her house, he counted out $6,000 from a wad in his pocket and handed her a hundred-dollar bill.
A month later, he was dead.
It's still not clear how or when Antonio hooked up with the gang of "crackers" he mentioned that night. What is certain is that the group's ringleader was a violent criminal headed for disaster. Records show that Roger Gonzalez Sr. was an intelligent but ruthless man who masterminded scores of violent home invasions, sometimes targeting drug dealers or crooks — but also robbing innocent families. He threatened rape or murder and even outright tortured victims to force them to reveal the locations of jewelry or safes. And he was training his son to do the same.
But records also reveal another reason police decided to set an elaborate trap for Gonzalez in the Redland: Not only had he been busted in a similar raid years before — leaving him well acquainted with police techniques — but he had also been let out of jail early after working as a confidential informant.
Gonzalez's increasingly violent escapades began 15 years ago in Little Havana. On January 17, 1997, Jessica Rivera answered her front door. A smiling man held out a bouquet of flowers. When she let him inside, however, he thrust a gun in her face. Several more gunmen walked in and threatened to kill her if she didn't open her father's safe. When she couldn't give them the combination, they vanished.
