Aventura officer facing kidnapping charges tracked girlfriend’s misplaced phone to Pompano and pulled gun, warrant says
The Aventura Police officer who was arrested this week on kidnapping and other felony charges pulled a gun on two men who said they accidentally took his girlfriend’s cell phone, unlawfully detaining them for more than four minutes, an arrest warrant said.
Officer David Delgado, 30, was arrested Wednesday relating to an incident in the parking lot of a Pompano Beach apartment on May 20. He faces two counts of kidnapping, two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, two counts of engaging in a criminal offense with a weapon and one count of misdemeanor battery, according to the warrant.
The police department has suspended him without pay since his arrest, Chief Michael M. Bentolila said in a news release earlier this week.
The two men who Delgado stopped complained to the police department a few days after. An Aventura Police major told the Broward Sheriff’s Office after his review that he felt the agency needed to start a criminal investigation, the warrant said.
The Aventura major told the Sheriff’s Office investigator that Delgado did not have permission to leave his jurisdiction that day and did not make any indication that he detained anyone at gunpoint outside of Miami-Dade County, according to the warrant.
The major went to Delgado’s home to take his gun earlier this month. There, Delgado introduced him to his girlfriend, who Delgado said is the same woman whose phone was taken in the incident, according to the warrant.
The victims told the Sheriff’s Office investigator that they were at the mall in Aventura during the day on May 20 to buy clothes before they were to perform at the Haitian Compas Festival in Miami later that evening. They used the valet to park their car, and when they left to head to the festival, noticed an iPhone that wasn’t theirs in the car, the warrant said.
The phone belonged to the valet attendant and after “multiple non-confrontational calls” with her, they arranged to return it after the festival and before another show they were to perform at later that night, the warrant said. They and the attendant miscommunicated about where the phone would be returned and ultimately decided they would give it back the next day.
The two men arrived at the Pompano Beach apartment in the 4000 block of West NcNab Road and were walking to an apartment when an Aventura Police car approached them “head-on,” the warrant said. Delgado, who had used his own phone to track the location of his girlfriend’s, hopped out and detained them with a gun drawn.
The victims said Delgado yelled for them to put their hands behind their backs “before I shoot,” the warrant said. They obeyed, recounting that they were in fear for their lives, so much so that one of them urinated on himself, the warrant says.
Delgado put his gun away and “slammed” the man who had the valet attendant’s phone into his car and handcuffed him, the warrant said. The other man, who was not handcuffed, started recording Delgado.
Delgado told them he stopped them to retrieve a phone that was reported stolen to Aventura Police, to which they explained they did not steal it and were talking with the phone’s owner, the warrant said. The victims asked for a case number and questioned Delgado’s authority to hold them at gunpoint.
“I’m not talking to you, man,” was Delgado’s response, according to the warrant, and told the man he handcuffed, “Shut the f— up. You don’t know who phone you got in your hand. Shut the f— up, and I’m trying to save your life.”
Delgado left without arresting either of them, the warrant said. The man whom Delgado knocked against his police cruiser was later treated for a minor knee injury at Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach.
On May 21, Delgado wrote a report that said the woman retrieved her phone without incident, the warrant said.
As of Friday afternoon, Delgado had been released from the Broward Main Jail on bond. He is required to be under electronic monitoring, was required to surrender his passport and is not allowed to possess any firearms, weapons or ammunition as conditions of his pre-trial release, court records show.
Attorney information was not available Friday afternoon.
