Caught on video, customer fatally shoots car thief at Florida car wash. He won’t be charged

https://www.miamiherald.com ^ | BY DAVID OVALLE FEBRUARY 09, 2021 06:00 AM, UPDATED FEBRUARY 09, 2021 07:42 AM

[Red Badger]

At a Miami Beach car wash in December 2018, a car thief named Jose Antonio Reyes Bermudez pushed an employee and climbed into a customer’s empty Mercedes SUV. As the SUV accelerated forward, the customer ran toward the vehicle — pistol already drawn.

The customer, Stephen Allen Lott, aimed his pistol and fired two shots as the SUV tried to drive away from the lot.

Mortally wounded, Reyes Bermudez — who did not have a gun or a knife — lost control of the stolen SUV. It plowed into the side of a building across the street, destroying an electrical box and cutting power to the street.

In newly released surveillance video, Lott does not look like he’s about to get struck by the SUV. In fact, the SUV had already turned right, and the bullets entered the side of the SUV, one piercing the left side of Reyes Bermudez’s head.

But under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, Lott had no duty to retreat. He told police that in the split seconds, he thought the SUV was bearing down on him and he fired into the vehicle’s front. And, according to a newly released prosecutor’s memo, he uttered the phrase that helped make charging him legally untenable.

“I was in fear for my life and I shot,” Lott told a Miami Beach police officer.

[Red Badger]