It was a hostage situation, Joe Marino said Thursday during a break in a court proceeding. If the police had just treated it as such, waited for a negotiator, cleared the area, Marino said, his stepson would be alive today.
The debate over how police handled the 2019 kidnapping of UPS driver Frank Ordoñez entered its fourth day of testimony Thursday, with Broward Circuit Judge Ernest Kollra hearing from expert witnesses about police training and protocol in some of the most challenging aspects of their job.
For Marino, the question is not difficult to answer. Lamar Alexander and Ronnie Jerome Hill had robbed a Coral Gables jewelry store, escaped, carjacked Ordoñez and led police on a chase from Miami to a busy Miramar intersection, where traffic stopped them from proceeding.
A shootout ensued. Alexander and Hill were killed. So were Ordoñez and a bystander, Richard Cutshaw. Four Miami-Dade police officers are facing criminal manslaughter charges for taking swift, decisive action that claimed the lives of the very people they were sworn to protect.
One of the officers, Jose Mateo, wants Kollra to dismiss his charges under the state’s Stand Your Ground law, which grants immunity from prosecution in certain cases of defense of self and others. It will be up to Kollra to decide whether the law applies to collateral damage — the manslaughter charges only apply to the innocent victims, not the alleged kidnappers.
Merino and his wife, Ordoñez’s mother, have been in court every day, determined to see justice done for a young man whose death is not only on the hands of the people who killed him, but those who said they were trying to save him.
“They made bad mistakes, plural,” Merino said during a break in testimony Thursday. “They should have backed off. Instead, they further complicated the situation. They maximized the danger.”
Mateo’s “stand your ground” hearing is scheduled to continue on Friday. Fellow Miami-Dade Officers Rodolfo Mirabal, Richard Santiesteban and Leslie Lee are also charged with manslaughter in the case. Jury selection in Mateo’s case is scheduled for the end of the Stand Your Ground hearing.
Rafael Olmeda can be reached at rolmeda@sunsentinel.com.
Jose Mateo appears in court with his attorney Richard Diaz on Thursday. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
