Man who fatally shot neighbor over dog poop, taunts victim’s wife in court room: ‘A coward was your husband. That’s why I killed him … he cried like a baby’

August 17, 2024 Gloria Shaw

74-year-old Omar Rodriguez erupted in a Florida courtroom on Thursday, hurling obscenities at Lisette Rey, the wife of the man he murdered.

Rodriguez, convicted of second-degree murder for the 2015 killing of 52-year-old Jose Rey, shouted at at the victim’s wife, calling her a “b—-” and saying, “A coward was your husband. That’s why I killed him … he cried like a baby!”

The murder occurred in June 2015 in Kendall, Florida and stemmed from a dispute over dog feces. Rodriguez believed that Rey had been allowing his dog to defecate in Rodriguez’s son’s yard, which led to the fatal confrontation.

According to prosecutors, Rodriguez initially confronted Rey and his wife while they were walking their dog. After an initial verbal altercation, the couple took their dog home but encountered Rodriguez again during a later stroll through the neighborhood. This time, Rodriguez was shirtless and made further threats.

Witnesses reported hearing the two men argue before gunshots rang out. Rodriguez shot an unarmed Jose Rey three times in front of his wife and then verbally threatened her.

After the shooting, Rodriguez told police that Rey had threatened to fight him, a claim that was later discredited. Rey succumbed to his injuries a week later in the hospital.

In May, a jury found Rodriguez guilty of second-degree murder and aggravated assault after deliberating for just six hours.

Rodriguez’s outburst in court appeared to be a reaction to Lisette Rey’s statement during the sentencing, in which she urged the judge to impose the harshest sentence possible on Rodriguez, whom she called a “coward” and a “murderer.”

Following Rodriguez’s outburst, he was forcibly removed from the courtroom by officers. Despite the emotional intensity of the hearing, Lisette Rey expressed her satisfaction with the life sentence, though she lamented that the death penalty had not been an option.

“I’ll never get to see my husband again, so where’s the justice in that?” she said. “At least he is behind bars, and he can’t harm anybody else.”

An investigation revealed that Rodriguez has a history of aggressive behavior towards his neighbors dating back to the early 1990s, including an incident where he waved a machete at a lawn worker.

Despite his violent past, Rodriguez had previously escaped serious legal consequences, including pleading guilty to battery on a police officer but only receiving probation.

After the murder, Rodriguez attempted to use Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law as a defense, claiming that Rey had threatened him with a knife.

However, this defense was rejected by Judge Robert Watson in 2021, who found no evidence that Rey had a knife. Instead, the judge suggested that Rodriguez had planted a knife at the scene to bolster his self-defense claim—a claim that Rey himself refuted while on his deathbed.

Rodriguez, who was held without bond has already spent nine years in jail.

At Thursday’s sentencing, Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Milton Hirsch sentenced Rodriguez to life in prison, with a minimum of 25 years behind bars—effectively a life sentence given Rodriguez’s age. The death penalty had been taken off the table by jurors.

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Assistant State Attorney Kimberly Rivera emphasized the severity of Rodriguez’s actions, stating that “he’s too dangerous and in deserving of the harshest sentence possible.”

Rivera also played a recording of Rodriguez boasting, “If I had to do it all over again, I’d do it the same way.”