4 September 21-27, 2023 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | music | cafe | culture | Night+Day | news | letters | coNteNts | MONTH XX–MONTH XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | ▼ BROWARD “NATURALLY WOBBLY” EX-PORN STAR WHO MOWED DOWN PASTOR IN 2021 FACES DUI CHARGE IN ANOTHER CRASH. BY ALEX DELUCA T wo years after critically injuring a Miami Beach pastor in a hit- and-run, a Cooper City woman has once again been arrested for allegedly driving under the influ- ence and causing a crash. Katherine Colabella, a 34-year-old former adult film star known as “Kitty Bella,” was ar- rested on September 3 after allegedly driving drunk, rear-ending a car at a red light in Plan- tation, and fleeing in her black Mercedes- Benz. She is currently on probation with a revoked license in connection with a March 2021 hit-and-run on the MacArthur Cause- way, where she struck Miami Beach pastor Noé Aguilar with her car, leaving him in a coma for several weeks. As with the previous incident, Colabella, who is now a hairdresser, fled the scene, ac- cording to police. Criminal and civil court re- cords reviewed by New Times show she has been accused of causing at least four South Florida car crashes since 2016. According to an arrest report, after Colabella drove away from the crash last week, a Plantation police officer caught up to her in a nearby parking lot and placed her under arrest. He described seeing her “bloodshot watery eyes” and smelling alcohol on her breath. Colabella, who was crying in the backseat of the police car, allegedly told police she was unaware that she was involved in a car crash. The report says that when the of- ficer asked her to participate in road- side sobriety tests, she replied: “I can do whatever you want. Jumping jacks. You want fucking toe touches?” During a “walk-and-turn” test, “the defendant made statements such as ‘I’m a bit dyslexic,’ and that she’s ‘naturally wobbly,’” the officer wrote in the report. The officer says he cut off the test “for her safety.” Colabella refused to consent to a breath test, according to the report. The incident comes two years af- ter Colabella was arrested in the near-deadly DUI incident in Miami- Dade County. At around 11 p.m. on March 25, 2021, Aguilar, a co-pastor at the Pen- tecostal Church of God in Miami Beach, was biking home from his part-time job as a waiter on the Ma- cArthur Causeway when Colabella slammed into him and then drove off — continuing on to her friend’s apart- ment and leaving him on the side of the road with traumatic injuries. He was eventually transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center, where he underwent surgery to stop a brain bleed and remained in a coma for weeks. Colabella admitted to police that she was drunk that evening and panicked when she hit the pastor on his bicycle. According to NBC 6, who spoke with Agu- ilar’s family, the pastor formerly worked three jobs to provide for his wife and two children. In an October 2022 profile in VoyageMIA, Colabella described how she was striving to move on from adversity and various “bumps in the road,” though she stopped short of mentioning the 2021 trag- edy. She said she had been consid- ering a career in nursing but was too squeamish and “would most likely cry every day having to see people hurt.” “I wouldn’t be where I am to- day without the challenges and I still have so far to go. So long as we stay in the light and keep pushing forward everything will go as planned,” she said. Apart from the two accidents in which she was criminally charged, Colabella has been sued twice in Broward County court over roadway crashes. In the first case, she was accused of negligently crashing into a vehicle in Davie in November 2016. (A citation issued to Colabella for allegedly causing the crash was dismissed.) The second case involved an October 2019 Plantation-area accident in which Colabella was accused of running a red light in her Audi and slamming into another vehicle. Both lawsuits were settled. In this month’s incident, Colabella was booked at a Broward County jail on charges of driving under the influence, driving with a suspended license, and violating probation. | RIPTIDE | GET MORE NEWS & COMMENTARY AT MIAMINEWTIMES.COM/NEWS Katherine Colabella has been accused of causing several roadway accidents in South Florida. Broward Sheriff’s Office photo ▼ SURFSIDE “POLITICAL B.S.” SURFSIDE STOPS SHORT OF CENSURING MAYOR OVER PREJUDICED “SPANISH” COMMENT. BY NAOMI FEINSTEIN D uring a commission meeting last month, Surfside Mayor Shlomo Danzinger was speaking about extending elected offi- cials’ terms when commissioner Nelly Velasquez interjected to voice her displeasure. “Commissioner, please stop interrupting,” Danzinger said. “OK, does anybody know how to speak Spanish to tell it to her? Because I’ve said it like four times.” The comment sparked outrage throughout the community, with residents calling the remark racist. Velasquez, a Hispanic resident born in the U.S. who “speaks English perfectly,” told reporters the comment was humiliating and insulting. The mayor initially doubled down before issu- ing a public apology on the dais at the next meeting. He told the Miami Herald he thought the commissioner was having trouble under- standing and wondered if it was a language bar- rier. Velasquez proposed a resolution to condemn the mayor’s actions through a public censure as part of the fallout. “Mayor Danzinger’s behavior and comments have resulted in the Miami Herald’s editorial board having to instruct Mr. Danzinger that ‘rac- ist insults and sexist remarks reveal themselves in subtle ways,’ including ‘the slip of a tongue,’” the resolution reads. “The town commission wishes to declare and establish that the town commission does not, in any way, shape, or form, condone or accept Mayor Danzinger’s aforemen- tioned behavior.” In her introduction of the item at the commis- sion meeting last night, September 12, Velasquez said she was “highly offended” by the mayor’s remark and said his apology was insufficient. “No person deserves to be humiliated at a public meeting by a mayor,” she said. “This per- sonal attack went far beyond just me.... He re- vealed his disdain for women, generally, and Hispanics, specifically.... This is not political. This is about right and wrong. Saying it is political is simply a weak excuse for not standing up and not doing the right thing.” After hours of bickering and throwing verbal jabs at one another, the commission rejected the proposal. Only commissioners Velasquez and Marianne Meischeid voted in favor of the con- demnation. The vote was taken shortly after midnight following a meeting packed with yell- ing that nearly erupted into chaos throughout the night. “It is a serious issue,” Meischeid said. “To vote against it is to condone the remarks.” Commissioner Fred Landsman and Vice Mayor Jeffrey Rose voiced their disap- proval of the item as they claimed it was po- litically motivated. Rose claimed it was “B.S.” because Danz- inger’s rival, former Surfside mayor Charles Burkett, helped write the resolution. “It is political,” Landsman said. “You have the right to like or dislike what we say. That is your prerogative. I don’t think censure is appropriate at this point.” Resident and former commissioner Eliana Salzhauer said she had hoped there would be “three voices of reason and sanity” to condemn the mayor for his insulting comment. “I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that Fred Landsman will turn on Shlomo and Jeff Rose,” she told New Times ahead of the vote. “They have a lock on all decisions. They are a developer’s dream team.” Salzhauer had been censured when she was commissioner after she flashed the middle finger during a town Zoom meeting. She pointed out that fellow elected officials with whom she typi- cally aligned on the dais even voted for it — a move she did not expect, she said. “This was an outright racist statement that the mayor made, and there’s no way to sugar- coat that,” she said before the meeting. “There needs to be three voices of reason up there who would stand up and say, ‘Shame on you.’ But unfortunately, I don’t have any faith that they would do that because they see them- selves as this voting bloc that delivers favors for the developers and don’t want any cracks in that wall.” Resident Gerardo Vildostegui said the cen- sure was necessary because the mayor’s apol- ogy — in which he said he regretted “not choosing [his] words more carefully” — focused on how he lost his composure rather than ad- dressing the hurt he caused to the Hispanic com- munity. [email protected] “NO PERSON DESERVES TO BE HUMILIATED AT A PUBLIC MEETING BY A MAYOR.”
