Police say a 29-year-old Cuban man who had been ordered deported killed his friend in an execution-style shooting that was caught on surveillance video in a Miami parking garage.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office charged David Paneque on Wednesday with killing Leandro Lopez on March 24. He has pleaded not guilty.
According to an arrest report, Paneque ambushed and shot the victim multiple times as he was trying to get in his car in a garage in the 7300 block of Northwest 36th Street. Paneque stole property from the victim as he was laying on the ground dying, the report said.
Surveillance footage of the brutal killing was released Friday, along with a police interrogation video showing a detective confronting Paneque with images from the footage.
"The whole thing's on video, why'd you shoot him?" the detective asks. "Might as well be on an iMax theater."
"I don't know nothing. I plead the fifth, I have the right to remain silent," Paneque replies.
"You do sir, you have the right to remain silent, you are under arrest for first-degree murder," the detective says.
The Miami Herald reports Paneque went to prison in 2008 for attempted murder and armed robbery. He was released in 2017, but taken into ICE custody and ordered deported. He was released under an "order of supervision."
Cuba rarely accepts back its criminal citizens, even as deportations have risen under President Donald Trump. The newspaper reports more than 37,000 Cubans in the U.S. are facing deportation. Last year, 463 Cuban nationals were returned to the island, a sevenfold increase from two years earlier.
