At dawn on one of America’s most scenic roads, a shooting was captured on cell phone, parts of it streamed on Facebook Live, sending shockwaves through the South Florida cycling community.
Avid cyclist Alex Palencia, 49, stopped his usual ride on the William Powell Bridge en route to Key Biscayne when Kadel Piedrahita got off his bike, pointed a gun at Palencia at point-blank range and appeared to shoot him in the abdomen. Piedrahita, then 41, was charged with second-degree murder and aggravated assault with a firearm.
Miami-Dade District Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle called the cyclist’s death “tragic” and a “senseless shooting” and warned that her office would not tolerate gun violence.
On Thursday, five years after Palencia was killed, Piedrahita finally got his day in court. And during opening statements, his attorney warned jurors that it’s the very thing they won’t see in the trial videos that proves her client’s innocence: a gun that Palencia pointed at Piedrahita before the bicyclist was killed, and which remains missing to this day.
“The weapon will not be entered into evidence,” said Miami-Dade Public Defender Yanelis Zamora. “That weapon had to have been removed from there. … It was removed from the scene before the police officers even arrived.”
The attorney told the jury that her client acted in self-defense when he shot Palencia. And, she said, Piedrahita only picked up the gun after he was punched by Palencia and forced to stop his motorcycle, then beaten by three bicyclists who punched him in the face and hit him in the head.
“He [Piedrahita] “He did the only thing he could do at that moment: defend himself,” Zamora said.
But prosecutors who addressed jurors before Zamora told a different story. Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney Conor Soper called Palencia’s death “a calculated, rage-filled, unjustified murder.” Soper told jurors the day before the shooting that Piedrahita was “seething with rage” during a Facebook Live message.
“When the time comes, I’ll break you in two,” prosecutor Piedrahita said during the broadcast. “You messed with the wrong man.”
Don Pan riders
Palencia was killed on a Wednesday morning in late August 2019 while riding with a well-known group of cyclists often referred to as the Don Pan Riders. They are so called because they leave a Don Pan bakery in South Miami in the morning and ride together north toward the toll road to Key Biscayne. They then cross the Rickenbacker Causeway and ride into town before turning around and heading back to South Miami.
That morning after Palencia’s death, Piedrahita’s son, also named Kadel, wanted to test the new wheels he had received for his bike. So he asked his father to ride with him in the Don Pan group. Riding along on his bike and filming or showing the event live was normal for Piedrahita, the father, who was proud of his son and whose lawyer claimed that he had been an avid cyclist himself years ago in Cuba.
The elder Piedrahita joined the group on his motorcycle, holding a Go Pro camera, just as they passed through the toll booth on their way to the Key. Then something went terribly wrong.
Palencia stopped his bike and Piedrahita stopped his engine. Their argument, captured on video, escalated until Piedrahita shot Palencia. Then, still with the gun in hand, Pieadrahita chased one of Palencia’s friends but did not shoot him.
When an officer arrived, he said he found Piedrahita sitting in the road, with Palencia lying still, practically on his lap. Piedrahita said he was yelling at his son to call 911. Police initially let the Piedrahitas go. It’s not entirely clear why. They picked up the elder Piedrahita at his home the next day and charged him with Palencia’s death.
Simmering argument
The only thing the defense and prosecutors agree on is that their feud arose from some kind of simmering quarrel that existed before the day Palencia was murdered.
Soper, the prosecutor, said that when Palencia saw Piedrahita following him, the men exchanged words. Then Piedrahita kicked Palencia as he sat on his bicycle.
“We know exactly why this happened,” said Soper, who told jurors that Piedrahita spoke directly on Facebook Live the day before to the man he would kill less than 24 hours later, saying: “I’ll break you in half. Just touch me…”
But it wasn’t that simple, defense attorney Zamora said. In the days leading up to Palencia’s death, Zamora said the two men had several conversations. In one of them, she said, Palencia called the defendant “almost every single Spanish-Cuban insult in the dictionary.”
Palencia, she said, made threats against Piedrahita, leaving him with little choice but to defend himself.
“He also told him,” Zamora told jurors, “You don’t know me. I would be careful when you’re alone with your son.”
