Miami-Dade high schooler robbed fellow student trying to buy a gun from him, cops say
.jpg "Anthony Mason Cenedo-Salazar, 18, was arrested after police say he robbed an American Senior High School student in the midst of selling him a gun in Hialeah on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023.")
An 18-year-old who was a Miami-Dade County high school student when police say he robbed another student of his school in the midst of selling him a gun remained behind bars Thursday afternoon.
Anthony Mason Cedeno-Salazar, who was a student at American Senior High School, 18350 NW 67th Ave., was charged with armed robbery with a firearm. He remained at Miami-Dade County’s Metrowest Detention Center as of Thursday after a judge ordered him to be held without bond the day before, jail records show.
The judge also ordered Cedeno-Salazar to stay away from the victim and their school. A Miami-Dade County Public Schools spokesman told the Miami Herald on Thursday that he stopped being a student at the school on Nov. 8 — six days after the alleged crime.
The district spokesman noted that Cedeno-Salazar “was subjected to the student code of conduct,” and that he is not currently a student at any public school in the county. He did not elaborate on why the code of conduct was applied, but said the alleged armed robbery did not happen on school grounds.
Cedeno-Salazar’s attorney declined to comment Thursday.
Around 3 p.m. Nov. 2, Cedeno-Salazar met with the other student, whose identity hasn’t been released, somewhere on West 36th Avenue in Hialeah to sell him a gun for $475, according to his arrest report. Cedeno-Salazar drove to the site with two other people, including a girl, and the gun buyer got into the car’s front passenger seat.
Cedeno-Salazar removed the gun’s loaded magazine, and gave it to the buyer so he could take a closer look, Hialeah police said. The buyer then returned the magazine to Cedeno-Salazar and gave him the cash.
Instead of giving the gun to the buyer to end the transaction, police say Cedeno-Salazar racked the slide of the firearm, pointed it at him, and told him to get out of the car. Fearing for his life, the buyer got out of the car and walked away, while the suspect drove away with the cash and the gun, investigators say.
On Tuesday, officers found the girl who was in Cedeno-Salazar’s car during the armed robbery, and with her mother by her side, she corroborated the buyer’s version of events, according to the arrest report. Around 4:35 p.m. Tuesday, police arrested Cedeno-Salazar at his home, about a mile away from his school.
This story was originally published November 30, 2023 at 8:11 AM.
