Man convicted of shooting and killing a neighbor in Kendall dog poop dispute
The man accused of shooting a Kendall neighbor to death over a dog defecating in his son’s lawn in 2015 faces life in prison after being found guilty on Friday of second-degree murder and aggravated assault.
Omar G. Rodriguez, 75, who had a history of menacing neighbors for decades, was convicted for the killing of 52-year-old Jose Rey.
Rodriguez was originally charged with first-degree murder, but a six-person jury found him guilty of a lesser charge because “the jury did not accept the state’s version of the facts,” according to Rodriguez’s attorney.
A sentencing hearing hasn’t been scheduled but Rodriguez’s attorney, Bruce Howard Lehr, said he plans to appeal.
After the verdict was announced in courtroom 7-4 at the Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building in Miami, Rodriguez extended his hands and a correctional officer put him in handcuffs. Holding a cane, he was then escorted to a backroom where he took off the beige suit he wore in the courtroom and exchanged it for an orange jumpsuit.
Rey’s family and friends hugged between tears and smiles.
Outside of the courtroom, Rey’s widow, Lissette Rey, said she sometimes feels like her late husband, a father of three, was a martyr.
“He took the bullet that could have been aimed at anybody else,” she said.
Lehr said a lesson must be learned: “Neighbors have to get along.”
The Kendall shooting
Jose Rey’s killing was the culmination, authorities say, of Rodriguez’s years-long pattern of harassing residents in several Miami-Dade neighborhoods.
On June 20, 2015, police say Rodriguez finally went too far, shooting Rey three times in the torso outside the home of Rodriguez’s son in the Village of Kendale, a community less than a mile from his own home where neighbors also had long complained about his tirades and threats.
Witnesses told police that Rodriguez, then 66, followed in his car as Rey and his wife, Lissette, walked their dog around 9 p.m. near the corner of Southwest 97th Street and 103rd Avenue. He parked his car on a swale, flashed his lights and revved the vehicle’s engine, a witness told police. He then confronted Rey about the dog defecating on his son’s lawn.
READ MORE: Judge rejects self-defense claim by Kendall man who killed neighbor in dog poop dispute
Rey took the dog home. By the time he came back, witnesses told police, Rodriguez had taken his shirt off and was challenging Rey to fight. Police say he shot Rey three times on the sidewalk as Rey raised his arms and walked backward. When Rey’s wife tried to comfort her husband, witnesses told police Rodriguez threatened her, too.
Rey died several days later at Kendall Regional Medical Center.
After his arrest, Rodriguez’s attorney said his client was standing his ground from a potential threat, a knife that they alleged Rey was holding.
Witnesses said Rey was unarmed and had his hands in the air. And Rey himself, before dying at the hospital, told his wife that Rodriguez planted the knife found on the scene.
In March 2021, a Miami-Dade judge ruled that he did not believe Rodriguez acted in self-defense.
Not his first run-in with neighbors
The countless people who feared and had run-ins with Rodriguez knew it was only time until things escalated.
For decades, residents in three separate Miami-Dade neighborhoods told the Miami Herald in 2015 that they had clashed with Rodriguez, some feeling held hostage by his volatility. They said he threatened them, showed a weapons case and filed strings of bogus lawsuits against them.
From 2008 to 2015, neighbors had filed more than 140 complaints with police about Rodriguez. Prosecutors determined that his antics fell just short of criminal, and he often responded by filing complaints against cops and prosecutors.
READ MORE: Man’s reign of terror came to predictable climax, Kendall neighbors say
Rodriguez has spent nearly nine years behind bars and he remained at Miami-Dade’s Metrowest Detention Center as of Friday afternoon.
Outside the courtroom Friday, Lissette Rey said Rodriguez should never be released from prison. When asked how would she describe her late husband, she said he was a “wonderful human being” and “the life of the party.”
“There’s another angel in heaven,” she said.
Miami Herald staff writer Chuck Rabin contributed to this report.
