What’s next for the Miami-Dade officers charged in shootout that killed a UPS driver?
The trial of the four Miami-Dade police officers charged years after a shootout that killed a carjacked UPS truck driver and a bystander stuck in traffic will begin in February.
Jose Mateo, 32, Rodolfo Mirabal, 39, Richard Santiesteban, 33, and Leslie Lee, 57, were indicted on manslaughter charged in June. All four officers pleaded not guilty in writing and waived their appearance in court.
At a Monday morning arraignment, Broward Circuit Court Judge Ernest Kollra set a trial date of Feb. 17. Representatives from the South Florida Police Benevolent Association as well as a Miami-Dade police officer sat in the gallery.
Prosecutor Chuck Morton said he plans to turn over to defense attorneys a terabyte — and about 6,000 pages — of evidence in the case. He also said he believed the trial would last three to four weeks, if all four men are tried together.
For years, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Broward State Attorney’s Office remained tight-lipped about the case. The FDLE completed its investigation in 2021, turning over its findings to prosecutors.
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Personnel records indicate that only two of the men — Mateo and Mirabal — remain on the force.
At the time of the shootout, Mateo and Mirabal were part of the Priority Response Team, which was created to respond to emergency situations across the county after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
Lee, who sources say worked on the SWAT-like Special Response Team, retired at the end of 2021, according to records.
Santiesteban, the fourth officer, was fired in June — prior to the indictment. He was a member of the Robbery Intervention Detail Unit, which focuses on undercover work to capture people suspected of crimes.
Details are murky pertaining to why Santiesteban, 33, was fired, though Miami-Dade civil court records show that his ex-wife accused him of domestic violence.
The next hearing in the case is set for Nov. 6.
The fatal shootout
The raging gun battle, involving more than a dozen police officers from at least three agencies and captured live by television news choppers, occurred on Dec. 5, 2019, at a packed intersection at Miramar Parkway and Flamingo Road.
Earlier that day, two men had pulled off a jewelry heist in Coral Gables and hijacked a UPS truck. That sequence of events ignited a high-speed interstate chase — and ended in the gunfight that killed two innocent men as well as robbery suspects Lamar Alexander and Ronnie Jerome Hill.
Frank Ordoñez, a UPS driver and 27-year-old father of two, and Rick Cutshaw, a 70-year-old local union worker, were fatally struck by the hail of bullets.
READ MORE: Miami-Dade officers indicted in shootout that killed UPS driver, bystander in Broward
Steadman Stahl, the head of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, pointed out how Broward prosecuted an officer for not engaging in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland — and is now “going after officers for engaging.”
The officers are devastated, he said, vowing to support them throughout the long process.
“I understand the grief and the upset that [the families] feel, but I think their anger is misguided,” Stahl told reporters. “Where the anger should be put at ... is at the bad guys that kidnapped their loved ones. That’s who got us here today. The kidnappers got us here, standing in court right now, looking to blame somebody for something [the officers] had no control over.”
Joe Merino, the stepfather of Ordoñez, previously told the Miami Herald that all his family wants is to see someone held accountable for his death.
“That’s what we’ve been asking for 4 1/2 years,” Merino said. “Only justice.”
