Miami Beach man stabs worker at his senior public housing complex
.jpg "John Gula, 83, faces a second-degree attempted murder charge for stabbing a worker at Rebecca Towers, a Miami Beach senior public housing complex.")
A worker at a Miami Beach senior public housing complex is nursing stab wounds after an octogenarian tenant attacked her with a knife on Monday morning, according to police records.
Miami Beach cops responded to Rebecca Towers, located in the South of Fifth neighborhood on 150 Alton Road, around 10:45 a.m. following a call about a stabbing, an arrest report said. Police arrived to find a woman unresponsive and gushing blood from her torso in the tenth-floor apartment of a witness who took her in.
The onlooker pointed police down the hall to 83-year-old John Gula’s unit.
According to the report, the woman, an asset manager for the city’s housing authority named Amelia Sola-Ortiz, was last seen headed to Gula’s door to discuss a “failed inspection and the state of his apartment.” Building security footage shows that while talking with the worker alongside his girlfriend, Gula pulled out a folding knife and stabbed the employee multiple times while his partner attempted to hold him back.
When Sola-Ortiz managed to wrestle the knife out of his hands while staggering away, read the report, Gula was seen “producing another folding knife from his right pocket” and lunging at the worker from behind before being stopped by his girlfriend again. Video shows he donned a U.S. Navy shirt, light-colored pants and blood-stained shoes, only swapping out the bottoms for a darker pair when police arrested him 15 minutes later in his girlfriend’s seventh-floor apartment.
Sola-Ortiz had a stab wound in her chest and a possible cut to the back of her head, according to the arrest report. Miami Beach Fire Rescue transported her to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center, where she arrived in critical condition and is now recovering from surgery.
A search warrant issued for Gula’s girlfriend’s apartment later revealed Sola-Ortiz’s bloodied glasses, blood droplets in the shower and sink, and his light-colored pants submerged in a bucket of “pink-reddish” liquid.
Gula is listed in his arrest report as a military veteran from Washington state and has no prior criminal history in Miami-Dade County. He was booked into Turner Guildford Knight Correctional Center early Tuesday morning, where he remains with no bond, and faces a second-degree attempted murder charge.
This story was originally published August 5, 2025 at 3:12 PM.
