Background: The 1000 block of West 71st Street in Hialeah, Florida (Google Maps). Inset: Leonardo Carracedo-King (Miami-Dade Corrections & Rehabilitation Department).
A Florida man has been arrested for threatening a victim for peeing near his girlfriend, leading to a stabbing and robbery, authorities say.
Leonardo Carracedo-King, 30, is facing charges of robbery with a deadly weapon, according to Miami-Dade County records. He was taken into custody on Tuesday, although the incident reportedly occurred the previous month.
Close to midnight on Sept. 13, three friends were together at an apartment located on the 1000 block of West 71st Street in Hialeah. As they set out to walk to a nearby gas station for cigarettes, they somehow got separated, per an arrest affidavit reviewed by Law&Crime.
One friend noticed a disturbance and observed a man, later identified as Carracedo-King, “armed with a large knife and confronting the victim,” one of the three friends. Carracedo-King allegedly claimed, “The victim had shown disrespect towards his girlfriend by urinating publicly near her.”
The friend who witnessed this tried to “calm the situation by apologizing for the victim and extending his hand to the defendant,” according to the court affidavit.
The three returned to the victim’s apartment, and the two friends who hadn’t been threatened left for one of their houses. However, this incident was reportedly just the start of the tension.
The victim stated later that after his friends left, he walked toward a nearby parking lot, “intending to apologize to the defendant.” He said he carried a baseball bat “for self-protection, as he had previously been threatened with a knife,” per the affidavit.
The man approached Carracedo-King’s apartment complex via the sidewalk, but before he could get there, a “codefendant” of Carracedo-King’s “confronted the victim.” This person was in Carracedo-King’s black Cadillac SUV and yelled for the suspect to “go and grab the gun,” police said.
The victim “retreated” and started walking back to his apartment, but he was being followed. As he walked up the stairs to his home, “one defendant forcibly removed the baseball bat from the victim, while the other stabbed the victim multiple times with a large knife,” the court document states.
It is not clear who the “codefendant” is, nor is it certain whether Carracedo-King or the other person committed the stabbing.
The friends of the victim then received a call, with the victim telling them “he had been stabbed and needed them to return,” police said.
Officers with the Hialeah Police Department reportedly arrived at the victim’s apartment just as the clock passed midnight and found “the victim lying on a bed in a bedroom with multiple stab wounds, including a large, deep wound to the center of his chest.”
The victim had “life-threatening injuries and significant blood loss,” according to the affidavit, and he was airlifted to the Ryder Trauma Center at the Jackson Memorial Medical Center — about 11 miles away.
Detectives responded to the crime scene, and they located “a wallet and cell phone belonging to the defendant,” which they said they verified, given witness accounts and surveillance footage. This footage also showed the two defendants “running to the black Cadillac SUV immediately after the stabbing,” with one of them carrying the knife and the other holding the baseball bat, police said.
The wallet and vehicle records connected Carracedo-King to the scene, per the affidavit, which concluded by stating, “Based on the fact the defendants acted together to attack the victim, the defendant was arrested and charged accordingly.”
Jail records state that Carracedo-King has bonded out of jail after being booked on Wednesday. Law&Crime reached out to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office for information on the “codefendant.”
