A Hialeah security guard shot at a shoplifter’s car, wounding 2 kids. He’s facing charges

Police detectives on Wednesday arrested a Hialeah supermarket security guard who fired at a seafood shoplifter speeding away in a car, wounding two young girls sitting in the backseat.

The security guard, Leonardo Morales Gomez, is being charged with two counts of attempted manslaughter with a deadly weapon for injuring the two children. For the attack on the adults, Morales was initially charged with shooting a deadly missile into an occupied conveyance. But after speaking to more witnesses, authorities on Wednesday afternoon upgraded that shooting charge to two counts of attempted murder.

Authorities believe surveillance video shows that the shoplifter was driving away — and was not a threat — as the guard squeezed off one round from his pistol.

The girls’ mother, Angela Pupo, who was a passenger in the getaway car, has also been arrested, on two counts of child endangerment and one count of petty theft. Her daughters were in the backseat; their injuries are not life-threatening.

According to a Hialeah police report, Pupo initially told officers that they were shot at by “two black males,” but later admitted the shooting happened during a plan to steal seafood from the Rey Chavez food market.

Morales, 50, and Pupo, 32, were booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on Wednesday. The suspected shoplifter himself has now been identified as Stedman Amaya, 39; detectives on Wednesday afternoon were searching for him.

Pupo has an extensive criminal history, with previous convictions for petty theft, grand theft, burglary and attempted home invasion robbery, among others, records show.

The bizarre story began on Tuesday afternoon when Pupo showed up at Jackson Memorial Hospital with her daughters, ages 6 and 8. Both had been wounded in the lower body.

The hospital called Miami-Dade police. She initially told police officers that she was driving near Northwest 19th Avenue and 60th Street, when she heard gunfire and realized her daughters had been shot.

Suspicious detectives pressed her. She finally admitted that the shooting took place outside the Rey Chavez Food Distributors, 780 West 17th St., in Hialeah.

Her partner was Amaya, who has been in and out of Florida prison repeatedly over the past decade for convictions including grand theft, fleeing, burglary and eluding police. Pupo agreed to go with Amaya to steal crab legs from the supermarket, in her car, according to a Hialeah police report.

Amaya walked into the store, selecting a box of lobster tails worth $199. According to an arrest report, he decided against buying the box — but moments later, snatched them from a shopping cart and ran out.

Morales chased the man as he got into the driver’s seat of the blue Toyota Corolla and drove off. “At this point, the defendant pointed the firearm at the vehicle and discharged one round into the vehicle,” Hialeah Detective F. Perez wrote in an arrest report.

When questioned by police, Morales said “he never saw a firearm, observe an overt movement, and the vehicle never attempted to run him over,” the report said.

One bullet hit the 6-year-old in the knee. Shattered glass apparently punctured the thigh of the 8-year-old.

“The defendant’s actions placing the victims in danger during the commission of a crime resulted in the victims receiving serious injuries,” Hialeah Detective Jose Elosegui wrote in his arrest report.

Pupo’s story that two Black men shot at her was reminiscent of another high-profile Miami case.

In May, Patricia Ripley, 47 and Hispanic, told police that two Black men ran her car off the road, then kidnapped her severely autistic son, Alejandro. But unlike Morales, she stuck to her story repeatedly, sparking a statewide Amber Alert.

Detectives eventually determined that Ripley pushed Alejandro into a canal, where he drowned. She is awaiting trial on a host of felonies.

This story was originally published July 29, 2020 at 12:30 PM.