Miami Appeals Court: Man Who Shot and Killed 2 Should Be Immune to Prosecution Under “Stand Your Ground”

Joyce Carranza is distraught after an appeals court decided the man who shot and killed her brother should be immune to prosecution under Florida's “Stand Your Ground” law.

“He's going to get away with murder, he's going to get away with executing my little brother,” she said Thursday, after the decision in favor of Gabriel Mobley.

In February 2008, Mobley shot and killed 24-year-old Rolando Carranza and his friend Jason Gonzalez outside of a Miami Gardens Chili’s following a dispute over women inside the restaurant. Mobley admitted he shot the men and claimed it was self-defense.

After listening to witness testimony and watching surveillance video last year, a Miami-Dade judge had denied immunity to Mobley. But the Third District Court of Appeal overturned that earlier ruling with its 2-1 decision Thursday, the Miami Herald reported.

“What about our evidence, what about the video? I mean, what about that?” Joyce Carranza said. “Isn't that enough to give the family a day in court?”

Mobley refused to comment on Thursday’s ruling but during last year's hearing he claimed he was afraid of the two men – though prosecutors said both were unarmed.

"I freaked, I was scared and I seen this other guy coming up from the back and then he reached up under his shirt so I was scared,” Mobley said. “I thought, you know, they were going to shoot or kill us or stab us or something. I was scared."

Carranza's family doesn't buy the self-defense argument.

“He leaves the restaurant, goes to his car, puts on his gun, puts on another shirt on top of his gun, ’cause at the time he’s just wearing a tank top inside the restaurant, right?” Joyce Carranza said. “Doesn't leave, he goes back.”

She is convinced her brother wasn’t a threat that night – but instead a victim of a crime that might go unpunished.

“He has a gunshot wound to his hand that exited out of his elbow, and that means that he's trying to stop it with his hands, he's trying to stop a bullet,” she said.

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