Off-duty Miami cop fatally shoots suspected burglar at his ex-wife’s home, sources say
An off-duty Miami police officer fatally shot a man Monday afternoon who was trying to break into his ex-wife’s home with a screwdriver, while the officer’s teenage son was inside, according to several law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation.
One source said the officer — who was at his own home in quarantine — rushed to the home after getting alerted by his ex-wife. (It was unclear if he had contracted COVID-19 or was home as a precaution because of possible exposure to the virus.)
The officer confronted the burglar, who was wielding a “large screwdriver,” the source said. The officer, who was not identified Monday night, fatally shot the 30-year-old man during the confrontation, Miami-Dade police said.
The burglar had apparently been trying to use the screwdriver to break into the house in the area of Southwest Eighth Street and 97th Avenue through a hurricane-impact window, the source said. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will investigate the shooting.
Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, passed in 2005, beefed up the state’s “Castle Doctrine” to allow a resident to use deadly force under the presumption that any intruder, armed or not, poses a threat of “death or great bodily harm.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2020 at 5:05 PM.
