Judge sentences Rickenbacker bike murderer to life, calls it ‘cold-blooded murder’
Kadel Piedrahita’s decision to take the witness stand during his trial backfired. He was sentenced to life in prison Thursday by a judge who said he didn’t believe the convicted murderer’s testimony.
During sentencing, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Alberto Milian called Piedrahita’s disputed testimony that the victim had a gun, an aggravating factor in his decision. The judge also discarded claims by defense attorney Elsa Fernandez that Piedrahita, 46, had been physically abused as a child and he ignored a plea to sentence her client to a minimum of 25 years.
“This was a cold-blooded murder,” said Milian. “This is an outrageous abuse of the right to bear a firearm.”
Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney Arvind Singh found Piedrahita’s testimony so disturbing that he asked the judge to issue a life sentence — despite earlier suggesting 25 to 40 years was sufficient.
Milian’s decision came after statements from murder victim Alexis Palencia’s children, his wife and his brother. Palencia’s wife Iris Kennedy read a statement from her children, telling how they missed their father’s hugs. They called life without him an “unbearable heaviness.”
Kennedy said she’d never forget the “pain and anguish” in her children’s eyes when she told them their father was dead. She told the judge Piedrahita had shown no remorse.
“Our helplessness and frustration overwhelm us,” she said.
Once the family was done, Piedrahita — who erupted several times during the trial, once screaming to Kennedy while she was on the witness stand that her husband was a “coward” — gave a lengthy speech saying he was sorry to everyone from the widow to the Village of Key Biscayne. With the aid of a Spanish interpreter, Piedrahita said he wasn’t “proud of” what he had done and didn’t set out that day to kill anyone.
For the first time since the trial began he seemed to become emotional. Piedrahita would tear up intermittently, then cover his face with his hands. At one point he reached into a sling he was wearing on his left arm and pulled out some well-positioned paper napkins to dry his eyes.
“We all lost,” he said. “You all lost Alexis and I lost my family.”
Don Pan ride turned deadly
Palencia, 48 and an avid cyclist, was killed in August 2019 as he rode across the William Powell Bridge — one of the most scenic in the country — heading to Key Biscayne. He was out for a morning ride with a group known as the Don Pan Riders. They got their name because they’d leave from a Don Pan bakery in South Miami, ride along the causeway to Key Biscayne, then return.
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But on that fatal morning, jurors learned, Piedrahita was waiting for the group on his motorcycle at the toll booth near the mainland. As they passed, he followed. He told jurors that his son, who cycled in the same group as Palencia, asked him to tag along and videotape the event.
Once Piedrahita caught up with the group and pulled up alongside Palencia, the two got into a scrap. Jurors learned during the trial that it was a continuation of a social media beef the men had got into in the days leading up to the bike ride.
Cellphone camera video captured the shooting from different angles. After the two men stopped riding their vehicles, video shows Palencia holding out a hand to try and block the fire from Piedrahita’s weapon.
Then he places both hands on his stomach and falls to the ground.
Piedrahita then turns toward Palencia’s friend Cesar Sosa, who can be seen running away from the scene carrying his bike and yelling “Yo, no no no no.” The first officer who arrived on the scene said he found Piedrahita on the ground cradling Palencia.
Though Piedrahita’s defense was based mostly on his statement that Palencia had a gun, the convicted murderer made no mention of any such weapon to the first arriving officer. It took a jury only three hours to convict Piedrahita of second-degree murder and aggravated assault with a firearm. He was also found guilty of aggravated assault with a firearm against Sosa.
Judge questions amount of ammo
Milian seemed incensed while sentencing Piedrahita. He said he watched all the videos and it was clear to him that Piedrahita used his motorcycle to try and knock down Palencia. He called the high-powered 45 ACP Browning revolver used by Piedrahita, a weapon of war and said there was enough ammunition to kill nine people.
And the judge said between the hearings and the trial, not a single person from the five sets of attorneys who at one time represented Piedrahita ever said Palencia had a weapon.
Milian said Piedrahita told the first officer who arrived that “he threw a water bottle at me, so I shot him.”
Said Singh: “He [Piedrahita] directly targeted this victim. There was no argument. You can even say he premeditated his actions. He knew exactly what he was doing.”
This story was originally published October 24, 2024 at 5:18 PM.
