A Florida man cruelly yelled that his neighbor “cried like a baby” in front of the man’s widow, explaining during a wild, caught-on-camera courtroom outburst why he killed him.
Omar Rodriguez was sentenced to life in prison Thursday after he was convicted of second-degree murder and aggravated assault for the June 2015 shooting of Jose Rey.
As Rey’s widow, Lissette, read a statement at the hearing, Rodriguez rose from his chair and began shouting, causing several people in the courtroom to gasp.
“The coward was your husband,” Rodriguez yelled out, according to a video obtained by NBC Miami. “That’s why I killed him … he cried like a baby.”
Several law enforcement officers pulled Rodriguez out of the courtroom and placed him in a holding cell as he continued shouting furiously.
Moments earlier, Lissette Rey had pleaded with Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Milton Hirsch to give Rodriguez the maximum sentence.
“I beg Your Honor, the harshest sentence imposed to the coward, the murderer,” she said.
After the handcuffed, orange prison suit-clad Rodriguez was removed, Rey continued her statement as the murderer’s voice rang throughout the courthouse.
“I wish though the death sentence would have been on the table, but at the end of the day, Mr. Rodriguez will continue to see his family, they will be able to see him, I’ll never get to see my husband again,” Lissette Rey said. “I wasn’t listening to exactly to what he was saying, I was tuning him out, I was just reading my thoughts. His words are irrelevant. He is irrelevant in my life right now. He’s pond scum.”
The jury in Rodriguez’s case had removed the possibility of capital punishment, leaving Hirsch the only option for a life prison sentence, with a minimum of 25 years, meaning the 75-year-old will remain behind bars for the rest of his life.
While Rodriguez wasn’t giving the sentence Lissette Rey was looking for, she still wished ill toward her husband’s killer.
“I pray he spends the rest of his pitiful existence in prison,” the grieving wife told the judge, according to the Miami Herald. “He’s a narcissistic piece of s–t.”
Jose Rey, 52, was walking in his Kendall neighborhood when his dog popped a squat on the lawn of Rodriguez’s son.
Neighbors told police they heard two men loudly arguing before Rey threatened to return and fight him.
Rey had dropped off his dog at home and continued the walk with his wife when they were confronted by a shirtless Rodriguez, the outlet reported.
Jose Rey was shot three times and Rodriguez threatened Lissette, who went to comfort her husband.
Rey succumbed to his injuries over a week later.
Rodriguez had asked for immunity in the case under Florida’s so-called “Stand Your Ground” law, but in 2021 a judge ruled he didn’t believe Rodriguez acted in self-defense, according to WTVJ.
The convicted killer alleged Rey threatened him with a knife, but prosecutors argued Rodriguez had attempted to plant the knife in his victim’s hand.
Rodriguez has been accused of treating his neighbors poorly, with one writing to then-Gov. Lawton Chiles that the man had declared “war” on neighbors and once threatened a lawn worker with a machete.
“This guy has been treating neighborhoods and everything else so badly, he got what he deserved,” Sergio Garcia told the Miami Herald after the sentencing.
“I wish that the death sentence would have been on the table,” Garcia’s wife added. “At least he’ll be behind bars and can’t hurt anyone else.”
