Decades ago, he was gunned down at his Miami restaurant. DNA caught the killer, cops say.

Nearly three decades after a Miami restaurant owner was shot to death in a botched robbery outside his business, police have arrested one of the suspected killers.

Miami-Dade police’s homicide bureau late Wednesday arrested Alexe Nodal in the murder of Lucio Leon, who was killed on his 47th birthday outside the Tuyo y Mio restaurant on March 2, 1990. A DNA hit led to the arrest of Nodal, 50.

At the time, the murder devastated family and friends who said Leon, after coming from Cuba a decade earlier, worked tirelessly to provide for his family.

“He worked seven days a week. Sometimes, he wouldn’t get home until 9 at night,” his wife, Marta Leon, told the Miami Herald in 1990. “Not until he bought the cafeteria did he finally take a Sunday off. So much sacrifice, so much for nothing. He didn’t deserve to die like that.”

The restaurant, at 7121 NW 35th Ave., had been the target of a robbery six months before his killing. Leon also ran a check-cashing business, which may have attracted robbers.

Miami-Dade police at the time said Leon was returning from the bank with money in a paper sack. As he got out of his 1980 Ford Thunderbird, three robbers pounced. He managed to squeeze off several rounds from his own gun, hitting one of the robbers — believed to be Nodal.

Bullets from a robber felled Leon, and one of the gunmen shot Leon again as he lay on the ground, according to a Herald article.

Detectives found the Cutlass believed to have been driven by the robbers abandoned two hours later at Northwest 104th Street and 37th Avenue.

This story was originally published August 15, 2018 at 9:21 PM.