Coral Gables Officers Won't Face Charges for Fatal Shooting of Burglary Suspect

Nearly two years after police fired off 39 bullets in a Coral Gables neighborhood, killing a burglary suspect, the incident remains shrouded in questions as police refused to give statements explaining why they opened fire and public records on the incident are blacked out with redactions.

Meanwhile, another suspect in the burglary, who was hiding under a car during the shooting and never fired a round, is charged with murder in the man's death.

A 14-page closeout memo, signed by Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle in August, says that because the two policemen who opened fire — Sgt. Steve St. Amand and Andrew George — declined to offer statements in the probe, prosecutors could not determine whether the shooting was legally justified.

One witness had called 911, claiming the fatally wounded suspect, Nivaldo Echevarria, drove a U-Haul pickup truck in the direction of the officers, but the state attorney's office ultimately deemed the account to be less than credible.

"At this time, without additional evidence or statements from Sergeant. St. Amand and Officer George, we are unable to clearly determine the circumstances that led up to the discharge," the memo reads. "Specifically, we can only speculate as to the exact sequence of events between the time Echevarria started moving the truck and the officers discharged their weapons. Therefore, we cannot find that the shooting was legally justified, nor is there sufficient evidence to sustain criminal charges [against the officers]."

Echevarria's alleged accomplice, Henry Rodriguez, is charged with second-degree felony murder in Echevarria's death, a spokesperson for the state attorney's office tells New Times.

Under the felony murder rule, defendants can be charged with murder for a death that occurs during the commission of a felony, even if they did nothing violent. While the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association has defended the law as a crime deterrent, advocates for criminal justice reform say it results in lopsided sentences for those who had no direct role in a death.

As Rodriguez's charge shows, the felony murder rule applies not only in cases where a victim of a crime is killed but also in instances where a defendant's alleged accomplice dies in the commission of the charged crime.

The Coral Gables shooting took place in the early morning hours of November 28, 2021, after police were called to an apartment complex about a possible car break-in.

St. Amand and George from the Coral Gables Police Department arrived at 115 Calabria Avenue to find a Chrysler 300 with a shattered window and its hood open. After canvassing the area, the officers say they discovered Echevarria sitting in a white U-Haul pick-up truck nearby.

It is unclear what happened next, as the officers did not wear body cameras, nor did their police cars have dashboard cameras.

Witnesses said they heard the officers issue commands like, "Put your hands up, open the door, let me see your hands," and "Don't move." St. Amand fired his rifle 21 times and George fired 18 gunshots, shooting Echevarria to death as the U-Haul slammed into parked cars.

One witness, a nearby resident who described waking up to the sound of "dynamite," caught the aftermath of the shooting on his cellphone camera. However, no witness offered a reliable account of how the shooting unfolded, the state attorney's office said.

The witness who said he saw the U-Haul zooming towards the officers later "wavered and vacillated" on that account when discussing the incident with police. He also incorrectly identified the suspects as "two African-American males."

The Miami Herald previously reported that police claimed Echevarria accelerated the truck in the path of the officers, prompting them to open fire.

After police reported the shots fired and requested emergency backup, Coral Gables Fire Rescue and multiple officers showed up to the scene and observed Echevarria bleeding out in the driver's seat of the truck. No firearms were recovered from inside the truck or from Echevarria's body, prosecutors say.

There were multiple gunshot holes in the front and driver's side of the vehicle, the memo states. Echevarria sustained bullet wounds to his neck, head, face, back, right and left shoulder, left wrist, left arm, left flank, left buttock, and left thigh, according to the county medical examiner's officer.

As officers arrived, they found Rodriguez hiding underneath a white Mazda, a few cars away from the scene of the shooting.

According to the prosecutors' report, Rodriguez told Coral Gables police that he was walking to his job at a yacht club in Coconut Grove when he saw police lights and heard gunshots. He said he crawled underneath the car to hide from the gunfire and remained there until officers spotted him.

While Rodriguez denied any involvement with the car burglary, prosecutors say his fingerprints were recovered from the passenger door and "B-pillar" of the U-Haul and the hood of the Chrysler. The closeout memo alleges one witness identified him in a photo lineup.

In a December 2021 interview with the state attorney's office and the Coral Gables Police Department, Echevarria's girlfriend said Echevarria had previous run-ins with the law for burglary and theft, according to the FDLE report. She described Echevarria "as intelligent, funny, and charismatic" while sober, but said he was dealing with drug addiction, the report says. According to FDLE, the girlfriend said she rented the U-Haul truck under the impression Echevarria would use it for his work as a construction laborer.

Following the shooting, one neighbor told investigators she woke up from the police radio chatter and looked outside her window to find the U-Haul leaving as a police officer was pointing his weapon, demanding, 'Do not flee, do not flee." She said she then heard multiple gunshots and ducked on the floor of her daughter's room but did not witness the shooting. Prosecutors say others reported hearing commands, such as "Don't move," although they also did not see the shooting.

"There are no witnesses who actually saw the shooting incident or the events leading up to the shooting. In addition, there is no testimony from the shooting officers, Sergeant St. Amand and Officer George, as to their intent or why they discharged their weapons at Echevarria, and we cannot speculate on that fact," State Attorney Rundle's office concluded.

Over a more than two-decade period ending in 2017, Rundle did not bring charges against Miami-area police officers over any on-duty shooting. While she has defended her record by pointing to dozens of criminal cases she has brought against police over assaults, fraud, and other misconduct, her office has never obtained a conviction of a police officer over an on-duty killing despite instances where police fatally wounded subjects who appeared not to pose an immediate threat.

New Times is awaiting records from the state attorney's office regarding an incident report from the 2021 shooting as well as court documents for Rodriguez's case. The Coral Gables Police Department provided a fully redacted copy of the incident report, saying that the document is exempt from public records law because the incident is the subject of an ongoing internal affairs investigation.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement's investigation into the deadly use of force is closed, according to a department spokesperson.

Coral Gables Police Department public information officer Kelly Denham tells New Times that the department's police vehicles are still not equipped with dashcams. As of three weeks ago, she says, all officers are wearing body cameras.