A second suspect has been arrested more than a month after police said a woman was kidnapped, beaten, shot and dumped on Interstate 195 on Miami Beach.
Kelly James Perpall, 39, was arrested Tuesday on charges of armed home invasion robbery, aggravated battery-kidnapping and attempted felony murder, records showed.
Another suspect, 33-year-old Latifah Mercedes Green, was arrested on similar charges earlier this month.
According to arrest reports, Perpall and Green were among a group of people who beat the victim, kidnapped her and held her in a car for over an hour before they dragged her onto the side of the Julia Tuttle Causeway and shot her three times.
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The incident unfolded shortly before 2 a.m. on Sept. 10 when Green and another woman allegedly arrived at a Miami home where the victim’s friend lived, asking for the victim.
When the victim came to the door, they questioned her about money, drugs and a stolen gun, the reports said. After the victim denied everything, they left and came back with at least three other men, who barged into the home.
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One of the men, who had been with the victim at a motel the day before, accused the victim of stealing this gun and asked where it was, before striking her “several times on the face with the firearm and his fist,” the arrest report said.
He then allegedly gave the gun to another man, who also beat the victim with it and punched her, and Green hit her on the head with a liquor bottle, police said.
A witness said one of the men took out a gun to stop anyone from intervening.
"The victim was dragged out of the home by her hair" and forced into a Ford F-150 by the man who claimed she had his gun, the arrest reports said.
Once in the car, the victim directed the suspects to her father’s house, claiming the gun was there.
When the group knocked on his door sometime after 2 a.m., he said he didn’t know anything about the gun and the suspects left.
The alleged attackers drove around with the victim until after 3 a.m., when they stopped the car and the men dragged her out, police said.
The man who wanted his gun back then allegedly shot her three times.
“After the victim was shot, she walked along the Julia Tuttle Causeway looking for help,” the arrest report describes. It wasn’t until 3:45 a.m. when Miami Beach police got a call from a passerby who said there was a body on the side of the road.
Officers found the woman, and took her with gunshot wounds and severe injuries to her face to Jackson Memorial Hospital Ryder Trauma Center. She had to be intubated due to her injuries, the arrest report details.
Two days later, police had learned that the victim was kidnapped and showed up to the friend’s house, according to the report. Though he had cleaned the residence, officers found blood that belonged to the victim “on the ceiling, floor, walls, doors and furniture of the home.”
Later, the victim told detectives from the hospital that she knew all the offenders except for Green. Green, meanwhile, denied being there when the victim was shot, police said.
The victim said she's known Perpall for around two years and identified him as being involved on the kidnapping, the reports said.
When Perpall was taken into custody Tuesday, he said he was at the scene but "denied touching the victim," the reports said.
During Green's bond court appearance earlier this month a judge said other suspects including the shooter had been arrested, but the shooter's identity hasn't been released.
