A family member of a girl who witnessed her grandfather get shot to death at her Miami apartment has been arrested in the murder, police said. NBC6’s Steve Litz reports
A family member of a girl who witnessed her grandfather get shot to death at her Miami apartment has been arrested in the murder, police said.
Carlos Manuel Rosales, 38, is facing a second-degree murder charge in the shooting of 62-year-old Luciano Matute, Miami Police officials said Friday.
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The shooting happened around 8:30 a.m. Thursday in the 700 block of Southwest 5th Street in Little Havana.
Officers who responded to the scene found Matute on the stairway of the building suffering from a gunshot wound to the chest.
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He was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital where he died from his injuries.
Surveillance video showed a man walking up the stairs to the apartment and moments later, the grandfather is seen tumbling down the same flight of stairs, and stays motionless on the bottom of the steps.
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The girl is seen running down the stairs, sees her grandfather on the ground, and runs away. A man with a covering on his head is also seen fleeing the scene as neighbors stepped out of their homes to see what was happening.
Police said Matute's granddaughter was alone in the apartment and had called her mother to tell her someone else was inside.
The mother called Matute, who went to the apartment to check it out before he confronted the suspect, police said.
Other surveillance footage showed the suspect running around the corner and up the street moments after the shooting.
Police said the shooting suspect fled the scene in a white Toyota pickup. A license plate reader picked up the tag of the truck, which came back to Rosales, an arrest report said.
Officers were able to find the truck and Rosales Thursday afternoon and he was taken into custody.
Rosales later confessed to the murder, police said.
Detectives learned that Rosales is the girl's uncle, and is married to the sister of the girl’s mother.
Investigators said Rosales was looking to steal money from his sister-in-law's apartment and didn't know his niece was there. The girl didn't know the man in the apartment was Rosales because he had his face concealed, police said.
Unrelated to the shooting, the police department's Special Victims unit launched an investigation and Rosales was also arrested on charges of lewd and lascivious molestation on a child and exhibition on a child, police said.
The allegations involve an 11-year-old family member who said Rosales had inappropriately touched her on multiple occasions going back to when she was just 8, an arrest report said.
"She gives us the examples that he has been touching her, that he tried to kiss her, that he has exposed himself to her and not only her, but there is another family victim that she gave us information on and now this changes the whole perspective of it, where this man for four years, at least, doing this to this young lady," Miami Police spokesman Michael Vega said.
Rosales was booked into jail, and was expected to go before a judge on Friday.
"Miami Police Homicide and Special Victims Detectives worked tirelessly throughout the day and night to solve and arrest this Murderer and Child Molester within hours of the murder," the police department said in a statement.
