On November 29, 2023, Mario Fernandez and Jorge Sanchez, two detectives wearing plain clothes and driving unmarked black pickup trucks, killed 59-year-old Osvaldo Cueli. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the detectives maintained that Cueli pointed his firearm at them while his family vehemently rejected that claim, saying that the two officers drove up to the property in tinted pickup trucks and started firing without identifying themselves.
Neither of the detectives wore a police body camera. An autopsy report found that the father of two and grandfather of three was shot in the back.
Owing to a lack of "competent evidence," prosecutors say they cannot determine whether the shooting was legally justified. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement opened an investigation into the officers' use of force immediately following the incident.
Robert Pertierra, the Cueli family’s attorney, tells New Times the memo is deeply flawed, citing discrepancies about Cueli’s firearm and whether the detectives’ vehicles had their lights on.
"However, because the exact sequence of events cannot be determined, due to the fact that there is no eyewitness who can establish the exact sequence of events, there is no video of the events, and both detective Fernandez and detective Sanchez declined to give a statement, there is insufficient evidence upon which to conclude either that the shooting was legally justified or upon which to prove a criminal case against detective Fernandez or detective Sanchez beyond a reasonable doubt," the memo, dated May 29, 2025, and published on the SAO website on June 17, reads.
Before the shooting, Cueli walked to the edge of his ten-acre property with a gun on his waist, believing he saw a trespasser. In an interview last year, his daughter, Gabriela Cueli, told New Times he rarely carried a gun but was concerned for his family’s safety.
"How am I supposed to defend myself? With a rock?" Gabriela says Cueli asked his mother. "I can't do anything with a rock."
"She wasn't comfortable, but obviously, because of what's happening, she gave it to him," Gabriela said.
As Cueli and his teenage son reached the edge of their property, two pickup trucks with tinted windows pulled up. One driver opened fire, killing the 59-year-old. His son, also named Osvaldo, said they had no idea the men in plain clothes were Miami-Dade police officers. He maintained that his father did not point a gun at the men, who did not identify themselves before shooting.
A photo of one of the unmarked trucks shows its windshield marked by nine bullet holes.
"They both came really close to the trees, and they blocked us in," Osvaldo, Cueli's son, told New Times. "They started shooting from inside the car, and they didn't have any lights on. They didn't announce themselves. They didn't put down the windows, and the windows were blacked out."
Gabriela captured the immediate aftermath of the shooting on her cellphone. As her father lies on the ground with blood pouring out of his mouth, one of the officers says, "We identified ourselves," and proceeds to step over Cueli's body.
After gunning down Cueli, officers detained his daughter, son, and mother, holding them in the back of a police car for hours.
"Their main concern was to get me and my brother out of the property and onto the road away from my dad," she told New Times. "They weren't trying to help him. They had all of us detained for various hours along the road."
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Assistant State Attorneys Kevin Betancourt and Lara Penn write in the closeout memo that Mario Fernandez and Jorge Sanchez of the MDPD Illegal Dumping Unit were called to 18200 SW 192 St. after two men tracked their stolen dump truck to the property.
"Stanley and Lenihan advised detectives that they went to that location to verify if the vehicle was there and were chased away by someone driving a black Toyota Camry," the memo reads. "In addition, Stanley and Lenihan recounted that the drivers of the Toyota Camry threw an object at them."
The officers drove up to the property and stopped by the front gates, where they say they located the black Toyota and a man armed with a firearm. The prosecutors say that an exchange of gunfire ensued, with Fernandez firing shots while inside his truck through the front windshield and Sanchez firing outside his vehicle.
"Cueli was struck by gunfire, causing him to fall to the ground," the memo continues. "In the immediate vicinity of his body, law enforcement located a SIG Sauer, P232, .380 pistol and one spent projectile."
But the family's attorney disagrees with this assertion. "How did that gun get to be two feet by the body if the video doesn't show a gun anywhere near the body?" Pertierra asks. "How did the gun get there?"
He says the video shows neither truck had police lights on, despite the memo claiming bodycam footage captured them active. Pertierra suggests the lights may have been turned on after the shooting.
"We have footage that the lights were never on," he tells New Times.
He adds that the memo also omits any mention of gunpowder residue testing on Cueli.
The memo notes that the autopsy found Cueli suffered one gunshot to his back. A firearms analysis included in the report said Cueli's pistol fired three projectiles found in Fernandez's truck and one casing recovered from the scene. Fernandez fired 14 shots, it states, and Sanchez fired six shots and one spent projectile, which the medical examiner recovered from Cueli's body.
"The projectile traveled from his back into the aorta, trachea, superior vena cava, through the right lung and right first rib and into the right arm, where the projectile was recovered," the autopsy revealed, according to the memo.
The Cueli family at a birthday celebration.
Photo by Gabriela Cueli
A toxicology report, according to the memo, detected cocaine and metabolites of cocaine in Cueli's system.
Last October, the Cueli family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Miami-Dade County, alleging it mishandled the police encounter and tried to cover up the “unjustified shooting” by portraying Cueli as the aggressor killed in self-defense.
My dad wasn't violent," Gabriela told New Times. "He wasn't doing anything wrong. He was simply protecting his property, and they showed up and killed him."
