A Florida man cruelly screamed that his neighbor “cried like a baby” in front of the victim’s widow, explaining, during a wild outburst, why he killed him, an act that was caught on camera in the courtroom.
Omar Rodriguez He was sentenced to life in prison Thursday after being found guilty of second-degree murder and aggravated assault for a June 2015 shooting of Jose Rey.
As Rey’s widow, Lissette, read a statement at the hearing, Rodriguez stood up from his chair and began yelling, causing several people in the courtroom to gasp.
“The coward was your husband”Rodriguez shouted, according to a video obtained by NBC Miami. “That’s why I killed him… he cried like a baby”.
Several law enforcement officers removed Rodriguez from the courtroom and placed him in a holding cell as he continued to scream angrily.
Moments earlier, Lissette Rey had asked Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Milton Hirsch to give Rodriguez the maximum sentence. “I beg Your Lordship to impose the harshest sentence on the coward, the murderer.”said.
After Rodriguez was led out, handcuffed and dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, Rey continued his testimony as the killer’s voice echoed throughout the courtroom.
“Even though I would have liked the death penalty to have been on the table, at the end of the day, Mr. Rodriguez will still see his family, they will be able to see him, I will never see my husband again,” said Lissette Rey.
The jury in Rodriguez’s case had eliminated the possibility of capital punishment, leaving Hirsch with the only option of a life sentence, with a minimum of 25 years, meaning that The 75-year-old man will remain behind bars for the rest of his life.
Even though Rodriguez was not getting the sentence Lissette Rey was seeking, she still wished ill on her husband’s killer.
“I pray he spends the rest of his sorry existence in prison,” the grieving wife told the judge, according to the Miami Herald. “He’s a narcissistic piece of sh*t.”
What motivated the crime?
Jose Rey, 52, was walking in his Kendall neighborhood when his dog squatted on Rodriguez’s son’s lawn, leading to an argument over the dog’s feces.
Neighbors told police they heard two men arguing loudly before Rey threatened to come back and fight him.
Rey had left his dog at home and continued the walk with his wife when they were confronted by a shirtless Rodriguez. José Rey was shot three times and Rodríguez threatened Lissettewho helped her husband.
Rey succumbed to his injuries more than a week later.
Rodriguez had requested immunity in the case under Florida’s so-called “self-defense” law, but in 2021 a judge ruled that he did not believe Rodriguez acted in self-defense, according to WTVJ.
The convicted killer claimed Rey threatened him with a knife, but prosecutors argued that Rodriguez had tried to plant the knife in his victim’s hand.
Rodriguez had been accused of treating his neighbors poorly, and one of them wrote to then-Governor Lawton Chiles that the man had declared “war” on the neighbors, once threatening a lawn worker with a machete.
“This guy has been treating the neighbors and everyone else so badly“who got what he deserved,” Sergio Garcia told the Miami Herald after the sentencing.
“I wish the death penalty had been on the table,” Garcia’s wife added. “At least he will be behind bars and will not be able to hurt anyone else.”
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