More than 50 members of the Colombian “Bandas Criminales” (AKA BACRIM) drug-trafficking organization have been rounded up after a joint operation based out of Miami. It’s the biggest bust of the emerging drug-trafficking gang since Wifredo A. Ferrer, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, took aim at…
Oscar Alvarado-Montoya and his friends gave Michael Rodriguez a beer. Rodriguez returned the favor by hitting Alvarado-Montoya over the head with the bottle. The injury would turn out to be fatal, and now Rodriquez faces first-degree murder charges…
What is it about Miami that makes the mundane seem so… menacing?Take the case of Mauret Curbelo, the manager of Danilo Ranch, where Hialeah peters out into the Everglades. Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture suspected Curbelo of running an illegal slaughterhouse from his ranch. USDA investigators went…
Last night, North Miami Beach police shot and killed Ernest Vassell after they thought he was violently brandishing a loaded gun. Turns out Vassell, who was autistic, was simply playing with a toy rifle…
Four people have been rushed to the hospital after a shooting near Miami Carol City Senior High School this afternoon. The shooting occurred after school hours and off-campus, but at least two victims are students. However, it has not been confirmed whether or not the students attended the nearby high…
It’s about time to give Miami-Dade’s northern seaside enclave a more appropriate moniker — Shady Isles Beach, perhaps?Consider: Last fall, voters in Sunny Isles Beach had three choices for city commission. One of them, Isaac Feldman, was later arrested for his role running an amazing South Beach scam involving Eastern…
Last December, the Disney-planned utopia of Celebration, Florida — a Rockwellian copy of small-town Americana, complete with calming elevator music piped around town — made headlines for its first murder and, days later, its first hours-long police standoff ending in suicide. Now, courtesy of a broker named Daniel Sebastian, Celebration…
The sad, strange saga of Ronald Miranda is finally drawing to an end.Miranda bolted from Los Banos, California, in 1980 after allegedly killing a man he found sleeping with his estranged wife. His face was splashed on “FBI’s Most Wanted” playing cards around the country, but Miranda successfully reinvented himself…
A video tip sent to the Department of Children and Families led to the arrest of 19-year-old Elizabeth Garcia over the weekend in the Florida Keys. Investigators say they were sent a video of Garcia trying to beat her 2-month-old child with a slab of concrete…
A brief car chase on I-95 last night led to Miami-Dade Police shooting and injuring a suspect. The incident began when an erratic driver refused to stop for police near NE 79th Street and Second Avenue a little after 9 p.m. The driver tried to hit an officer with his…
It was a big week for blow here in Miami, with Feds busting both the cocaine supply chain and yet another bank that accepted the illicit proceeds no questions asked.The first case involves fake passports, smuggled radio equipment, and dramatic, multi-ton ocean drops of cocaine. The second involves bankers in…
Meera Khan, a former employee of the state Department of Children and Families in Miami, was a true welfare queen. She worked for DCF for nine years and during that time faked applications to collect food stamps for herself, as well as ripped off her needy clients by pocketing fraudulent…
You think your significant other is needy? At least he or she is not staging kidnappings in order to get your attention.Twenty-one-year-old Rashell Leeann Barfield was arrested yesterday after leading her boyfriend, family, and police on a search for a white van in which she was supposedly being held captive…
That cocaine you’re planning to enjoy this weekend — because really, how else can you appreciate those amazing beats blasting on Lincoln Road — might contain more than coca. Actually, a new study says if you’re snorting it in Miami, it’s probably chock full of a compound that will eat the…
Douglas Betancourt sat quietly in a back row straight through a service in a Little Havana church yesterday evening. After the mass, Pastor Hector Silva and his worshipers gathered in the back to eat a late meal together. Betancourt, a 25-year-old transient, approached the group, whipped out a knife and…
Last August, Gibson Belizaire died under a hail of bullets in a grimy corner behind a Little Haiti body shop. Five cops — including two with troubling records of violence — blasted more than 130 rounds at the slight 21-year-old, killing him instantly after he’d run from a roadblock and…
Late last month, an Orlando-area judge ruled a major Florida drug law that’s been on the books since 2002 unconstitutional. Just last week, a Miami judge cited that ruling and overturned the conviction of 39 defendants. The rulings will have to work their way through the courts, but if a…
Vladimir Louissant, 25; Victoria Barkley, 26; Byron Kyler, 23; and Reginald Mitchell, 26, have been swiftly arrested after the murder of a Brinks armored truck guard yesterday afternoon outside the Calder Casino in Miami Gardens. The four suspects had fled the scene but were captured by the FBI’s South Florida…
Welcome to another bizarre Friday in the Magic City.Our story today involves a man in a wheelchair, a teenage shape-shifter, and a hella buff Mexican soap opera star.According to Miami Police, 16-year-old Gabriel Soto was riding the bus in Little Havana one Friday morning last month when he befriended a…
The orishas must be looking out for Carlos Valdes. We wrote this week about the local Santería priest’s legal battle with Kellyd Rodriguez — a man Valdes says has stalked his family for four years because he hates the Afro-Cuban religion.Yesterday Rodriguez, who was out on bond on the stalking…
Nevin Shapiro and his Coral Gables attorney, Maria Elena Perez, have the national media eating out of their hands these days. Shapiro is trying to bring down UM’s football program, and Perez — who’s not in jail — has helped him by making TV appearances. But the pair wasn’t all…
Two Miami Gardens men, Emerson Callum and Lavont Flanders Jr., have been arrested for drugging woman, engaging in forced sex acts with them, videotaping the acts, and then selling the videos. Both were similarly charged in 2007, but those claims were dropped just weeks ago…
