Nearly six years after UPS driver Frank Ordoñez was taken hostage in his work truck and killed in a shootout between police officers and his captors at a busy intersection in Miramar, newly released details reveal the most complete look yet at that day.
The shootout that killed Ordoñez and another bystander unfolded shortly before 6 p.m. on Dec. 5, 2019, on Miramar Parkway near Flamingo Road. Ronnie Jerome Hill and Lamar Alexander robbed a jewelry store in Coral Gables earlier that afternoon, then hijacked Ordoñez’s UPS truck 2 miles away and took him with them on a high-speed chase into Broward County.
By the time the UPS truck hit traffic at the busy Miramar intersection, dozens of cars were stopped at the red light as 20 officers from six different South Florida police agencies swarmed in from all sides, several with guns drawn. Many people took out their cellphones to record, confused about such a massive police response. Then the barrage of bullets flew.
Hundreds of photos, videos, audio files and documents submitted as evidence in the criminal cases pending against the four officers whose bullets struck Ordoñez and bystander Richard Cutshaw, a 70-year-old man who was sitting inside his car ahead of the UPS truck at the traffic light, were released by the Broward State Attorney’s Office last week. Emergency calls, videos from police body-worn and dashboard cameras, witnesses’ cellphone videos and sworn witness statements give new details of the kidnapping, the 25-mile pursuit and the close calls of some who were stuck in their cars with nowhere to go when 200 gunshots erupted around them.
Miami-Dade Police Officers Leslie Lee, Jose Mateo, Rodolfo Mirabal and Richard Santiesteban are facing manslaughter charges in Broward County.
The five bullets found in Ordoñez’s body during an autopsy traced back to the guns of Lee, Santiesteban, Mateo and Mirabal, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation report released in August 2024 said. The one bullet found in Cutshaw during the autopsy traced back to Mirabal’s gun.
‘One of your vehicles got carjacked’
Hill and Alexander robbed a jewelry store in Coral Gables on Miracle Mile about 4 p.m. Hill, wearing a U.S. Postal Service uniform and a white mask, rang the doorbell. Staff let him inside, and he pulled a gun out of an envelope.
A woman working at the store was struck in the head by a bullet fragment after Hill shot at the floor, according to his autopsy report. As he ran to Alexander waiting in a U-Haul outside, the store’s owner and another employee shot at Hill, the autopsy report and a Florida Department of Law Enforcement report said.
Photos released by the State Attorney’s Office show thousands of dollars in cash and jewelry, some still attached to displays.
They fled from the store in a bullet-riddled U-Haul and ran into Ordoñez about 20 minutes later on Mariana Avenue, ditching the U-Haul there.
Ordoñez had just dropped a package off at a woman’s door. She saw Ordoñez with his hands up before the truck drove away, she told FDLE investigators.
A Coral Gables Police and Fire Rescue employee contacted a UPS supervisor shortly after Ordoñez and his truck were taken.
“We’re trying to verify. One of your vehicles got carjacked …” the first responder said, asking whether they had a tracker on the truck.
The UPS employee asked if the driver was with the people who carjacked the truck.
“It can possibly be, yes,” the first responder replied. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
“Oh my gosh,” the supervisor replied. “OK, wow.”
The UPS supervisor called police back and said the truck’s tracker showed it heading north on Florida’s Turnpike near Northwest 82nd Street, according to the calls newly released by the State Attorney’s Office.
Body camera videos show pursuit
Body-worn camera videos from several Miami-Dade Police officers previously released to the Sun Sentinel show the pursuit into Broward County. Some officers were already holding their guns drawn before they arrived to the intersection. One drove at more than 100 mph. Nearly two dozen marked and unmarked police cars from different agencies were involved in the chase at some point.
As the two robbers fled from officers, Ordoñez was being held with a gun to his head, law enforcement communicated over radio during the chase.
“He might shoot him, dog,” one officer said to another in his car.
Shortly before 5:30 p.m. as the chase continued, the officers communicated on radio that someone was shooting from the driver’s side of the UPS truck at one of the officers, the video showed. At least one bullet pierced a police officer’s car door, according to a March court filing by Mateo’s attorney.
Minutes later, body-worn camera from an officer who was following the UPS truck showed he answered a phone call while driving with his gun pointed.
“I can’t talk right now, OK!” the officer yelled.
“Are you OK?” a woman asked.
“We’re on TV, all right. How ’bout you look at that … I’m right behind the guy with the gun, OK?” the officer said, referencing TV news helicopters that were showing the chase in real-time.
“I see your car,” the woman said before the call ended.
The officer said he could see the driver from his car, shortly after he had entered into Miramar.
“You guys are gonna come up on major traffic here,” someone said over the radio.
Law enforcement intercepted a phone call one of the robbers made from inside the UPS truck to his girlfriend during the chase, according to the March filing by Mateo’s attorneys. He told her not to watch the news and that he wouldn’t be coming home.
Officers with multiple agencies created “a blockage” to stop the UPS truck from continuing to drive west on Miramar Parkway, forcing the truck to make a U-turn and head east toward Flamingo Road, according to a Doral Police report that was included in the documents released Thursday. It came to a stop at the intersection of the two roads.
When multiple officers arrived and jumped out of their cars, the shootout quickly began, the video showed. At least a dozen cars were stopped in front of the UPS truck at the nearby red light when officers started shooting at the truck. Several cars quickly drove toward the right-hand turn lane to escape the bullets, the video showed.
As many as 221 bullets were fired by 20 officers, according to the FDLE investigation report.
Mateo’s attorney wrote in the March motion that the robbers had immediately started shooting at the officers.
Mateo shot all of the rounds in his clip, then reloaded. But there was no longer any threat. All three men were lying near the steps on the right side of the truck, body-worn camera video showed.
A large group of officers then gathered around Ordoñez, lying on the road, as they gave him chest compressions and medical treatment. One officer in the group said Ordoñez did not have a pulse. Within minutes, he was transferred to a stretcher and put in an ambulance, the video showed.
Just before midnight that night, a supervisor told a small group of Miami-Dade officers to turn in their cameras, their body-worn camera videos show.
“Sir, with all due respect, is that an order?” one of them asked.
“Yes, that is an order,” the supervisor replied.
‘People were used as barricades’
Some of the videos recorded by witnesses were lighthearted at first.
“What is happening?! Oh my god,” witness Deymi Baez said with a laugh before the shooting began. The light turned green but no cars were moving because of the police cars swarming the area, her video showed. Cutshaw’s car was ahead of her.
A boy laughed in the passenger’s seat of his father’s car on Flamingo Road as he and his father, Hernan Mirabal-Basto, recorded the commotion on the other side of the intersection.
More than a dozen people in work uniforms crossed the street as the first bullets could be heard, the boy’s cellphone video shows. When Cutshaw was shot, his car moved from being stopped at the intersection to slowly crashing into the front of Mirabal-Basto’s head-on.
The boy, panicking, told his father in Spanish to crouch down and pulled on his shirt to keep him inside the car when he tried to get out. The boy was hyperventilating at the end of the video as the front of Cutshaw’s car was facing their windshield.
“Lo mataron y choco con nosotros,” meaning in English, ‘They killed him and he crashed into us,’” Mirabal-Basto said in the video, according to the FDLE report.
Numerous witnesses told FDLE investigators later that night that they ducked down in their cars when they heard the shots. One man said he felt bullets pierce underneath the car and thought he could have been hit had the bullets moved a few inches. A woman said she ducked down to cover her children in her back seat.
Catherine Cortes was in her car in the turn lane to the left of the UPS truck. Cellphone video she recorded shows at least four officers with guns out sprinting through the lanes around cars, a few shots, then a hail of bullets.
“… I just see the police come, like on all sides. And then just shooting everywhere,” she said in a sworn statement to FDLE later that night.
Witness Ernst Jean told FDLE investigators the UPS truck was stopped behind his Hyundai Sonata in traffic during the shooting. Jean said he took his seatbelt off and ducked down to lie on the seat, according to audio of his sworn statement released Thursday. Watching through his rearview mirror, Jean told the investigator he could see someone shooting from inside the UPS truck. One bullet went through a headrest inside of his car and some through the back windshield, according to his statement.
Alexandra Ferrufino told another FDLE investigator that her 3-year-old and 6-year-old daughters were in the back seat in their car seats. The girls got themselves out of the car seats to hide, and she crawled over the center console to get into the back of the car with them. They all huddled on the floor.
Jahrue Lyttle, another witness, shared his frustrations that the shootout unfolded in such a busy area. The Uber he was riding in was struck by four bullets, according to his sworn statement to FDLE. He said he saw officers using cars in traffic as “shields” while they were shooting.
“But, I don’t feel like this situation’s right,” Lyttle said at one point to the investigator.
“You don’t feel like what situation is right?” the FDLE investigator asked.
“‘Cause, people were used as barricades,” he said. “The cops stopped everybody right here so they couldn’t move. Nobody was able to move from the situation … Honestly, I’m not OK, bro. But from this situation, you got people just … sitting ducks.”
Pending cases
All four officers were indicted in June 2024. They have each pleaded not guilty, court records show. No charges were filed in connection with the deaths of the robbers.
Mateo’s defense attorney at a court hearing Friday argued that the officer is entitled to immunity under the state’s Stand Your Ground law, even though the two men who died weren’t the people he was acting in self-defense against. The judge said he intends to rule on Monday.
Miami officer accused in Miramar UPS driver’s shooting death seeks Stand Your Ground immunity
Information from the Sun Sentinel archives was used in this report.
Angie DiMichele can be reached at adimichele@sunsentinel.com