4 February 29 - March 6, 2024 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | news | letters | coNteNts | WITHOUT WARNING Family demands answers after Miami-Dade cops kill father outside Redland farm. BY NAOMI FEINSTEIN W hen Osvaldo Cueli spotted a man who he believed to be trespassing around his ten-acre farmland in Redland, he was concerned about his fami- ly’s safety and retrieved his moth- er’s pistol. His family says he was not the gun-toting type, but he felt he had no choice but to arm him- self before going back out to see if the man had returned. “These were his words to my grandmother, ‘How am I supposed to defend myself? With a rock? I can’t do anything with a rock.’ She wasn’t comfortable, but obviously because of what’s happening, she gave it to him,” Cueli’s daughter, Gabriela, tells New Times. Around 3 p.m. that day, after Cueli headed back to the edge of the property with his teenage son, two people drove up in a pair of pickup trucks with tinted windows — vehi- cles Cueli did not recognize. By all accounts, one of the drivers opened fire on Cueli in the confrontation that followed, and the 59-year- old farmer was shot dead near the entrance to the property where he’d run his tree nursery for decades. Cueli’s son, also named Osvaldo, tells New Times that neither he nor his dad had any idea the two drivers, who were wearing jeans and unmarked shirts, were Miami-Dade po- lice officers. He says police did not identify themselves as law enforcement before shoot- ing. “I didn’t even know if they were cops. I thought they were random people trying to kill us,” the son says. In the aftermath of the November 2023 in- cident, the Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD) released few details about what had transpired, aside from stating that the officers were part of an illegal dumping unit respond- ing to a report of a stolen vehicle. While the department claimed Cueli brandished his gun at the officers before police opened fire, the son maintained that his father never pointed a weapon at them. A photo of one of the unmarked trucks shows multiple bullet holes in its driver-side windshield. According to the autopsy report, Cueli suffered fatal gunshot wounds to his torso and right arm. Newly obtained cell phone video recorded by Cueli’s daughter shows the moments after the fatal shooting at his property on SW 192nd St. The video captures Cueli on the ground with blood pouring out of his mouth. The two policemen standing over him are wearing street clothes — one with a black sweater and the second in a gray T-shirt with a badge hanging around his neck. The second officer claims, “We identified ourselves,” and then steps directly over Cueli’s body. “That’s my dad,” Gabriela yells in the video, crying as her father’s body lies motion- less. “That’s my dad. The cops shot my dad.” “My dad wasn’t violent,” Gabriela tells New Times. “He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was simply protecting his prop- erty, and they showed up and killed him.” What happened next was nearly as shock- ing to the Cueli family as the shooting itself. After fatally wounding his father, MDPD de- tained the teenager and put him in the back of a police car, holding him for several hours. His mother was handcuffed and detained as well. “A lot of the police were just laughing and joking around the whole time,” Osvaldo says. “None of them were answering me when I was talking to them.” Citing an open investigation into the shoot- ing, the Florida Department of Law Enforce- ment and MDPD declined to comment on New Times’ inquiry, including requests for informa- tion about the officers involved in the shooting and details about the events that preceded it. A Family Man Gabriela, along with her three children — ages 1, 2, and 3 — her brother, aunt, grand- mother, father, and mother lived on the ten-acre property, a former tree farm that once belonged to her late grandfather. “We’ve lived there our whole lives,” Gabri- ela says. “We grew up there. It’s always been a family house.” Born in Miami, Cueli was one of four chil- dren in a tight-knit Cuban-American family. His family says he dedicated himself to tending the farm and maintaining the land, where he grew mahogany and Royal Palms, among other trees. The property lies just east of the Everglades, about a 30-mile drive from downtown Miami, in a rural community that served as the site of some of south Miami- Dade’s first agricultural settlements. Cueli’s children describe their dad as a hard-working and loving family man. “Everything he did was for the family — it was for us,” Gabriela says. “He’d wake up, take care of the farm. He was always trying to make people happy. He was always trying to make peace between everybody.” Osvaldo says his dad, whom he calls his best friend, would put everyone else’s needs before his own. The son recalls when he wanted to buy a new TV for the back patio, his father offered to pay for it and put it in the son’s room instead. He says he pushed his dad to replace his own TV, telling him, “You never buy yourself anything.” Cueli initially obliged but, in the end, put the new set in a family area out- side on the patio. Gabriela and Os- valdo insist their dad was not one to carry a gun day-to-day and that he was not a violent man. The siblings say on the day of the fatal shooting, he grabbed their grandmother’s gun because he was concerned the person whom he spotted around their property earlier in the day would return. Unexpected Visitors It was a typical day at the Cueli household on November 29, 2023. Cueli was with his friend working on a vehicle while his son and Gabri- ela left the house to buy a car part. After returning to the property, the son says he was talking to his dad outside the house when he noticed people standing by their back gate. He thought they might be his dad’s friends, so he and his father rode over in a golf cart to investigate. “Once we start getting a little close, we see that they hopped the fence, and they’re inside our property,” Osvaldo tells New Times. “They were looking at like a boat trailer by the edge of the property. Then, as we started to get closer, they still hadn’t noticed us. My dad honked the horn, and they took off.” The father and son hopped into their car to track down the white truck that drove away. After they went around the block and came back down the street, Osvaldo says, they noticed the truck again parked on their property. “As I try to get out of the car and try to look at their faces, they drive off,” he says. The duo made their way back to the house, where Cueli grabbed the gun and put it in a holster on his waist before driving back out to the front of the property, with his son follow- ing behind in a golf cart. They were standing near the entrance to the farmland when, the son says, two trucks they did not recognize — a pair of unmarked Rams with tinted win- dows — zoomed up. “They both came really close to the trees, and they blocked us in,” Osvaldo says. “They started shooting from inside the car, and they didn’t have any lights on. They didn’t an- nounce themselves. They didn’t put down the Osvaldo Cueli (right) stands next to his wife, daughter Gabriela, and teenage son Osvaldo while they hold Cueli’s grandchildren. Photo by Gabriela Cueli | METRO | “I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW IF THEY WERE COPS. I THOUGHT THEY WERE RANDOM PEOPLE TRYING TO KILL US.”
