Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Jordyn Alexander Howe shoots fellow student on school bus

Jordyn Alexander Howe pulled a gun from his backpack and displayed it on a school bus, police said. It went off, killing a 13-year-old girl.

Lourdes Guzman-DeJesus hopped onto her bus Tuesday morning, but never made it to school.

The cheery 13-year-old, who loved music, dancing and art, was accidentally shot and killed by a fellow student who had carried a gun onto the school bus.

Miami-Dade police late Tuesday charged 15-year-old Jordyn Alexander Howe with manslaughter and carrying a concealed firearm.

On the way to school Tuesday, Jordyn pulled the gun out of his backpack and displayed it, according to an arrest affidavit. The gun went off once, striking Lourdes in the neck.

She was flown to Miami Children’s Hospital, where she died. No one else was injured.

Lourdes and her younger sister were among eight students on the private bus bound for three Homestead area charter schools: Palm Glades Preparatory Academy, where Lourdes was a student; Summerville Advantage Academy, which her sister attended; and Jordyn’s school, Somerset Silver Palms.

The shooting occurred about 6:45 a.m. as the bus was traveling at Southwest 296th Street and 137th Avenue in Homestead, according to Miami-Dade police. The gun was recovered at the scene.

An 11-year-old girl on the bus immediately used her cellphone to call her mother.

“I’m very lucky she was OK,’’ her mother told reporters at the scene.

Other parents flocked to Palm Glades to pick up their children. Grief counselors were also at the school.

Jordyn was taken to Miami-Dade police headquarters where he provided a sworn statement, the affidavit said. On Tuesday night, he was taken to Miami-Dade Juvenile Assessment Center.




Alberto Luis Sierra kills his estranged wife and two step daughters

Police say Alberto Sierra also admitted to raping his wife and his 8-year-old stepdaughter after suffocating them.

Faced with damning DNA evidence, police say, Alberto Luis Sierra finally confessed to suffocating his estranged wife and two young step-daughters with a plastic bag — and raping the oldest girl after she was dead.

His arrest early Tuesday capped a furious police investigation into the brutal triple slaying of Gladys Machado, 29 and Julia and Daniela Padrino, ages 8 and 4. A neighbor found their bodies last week laid out inside the master bedroom closet of a home where the couple used to live.

The shocking details emerged Tuesday as Miami-Dade police charged Sierra, 28, with three counts of first-degree murder and two of sexual battery.

He was being held without bail at the main Miami-Dade County Jail. Prosecutors likely will seek the death penalty, though the decision is weeks away.

Sierra, a convicted felon, was long the main focus of the investigation and confessed Monday night after hours of questioning.

The couple recently split up. Machado, a mother of three, had been living with her grandmother in Homestead while Sierra had moved into his mother’s townhome in Kendall.

Machado was last seen the evening of Nov. 10 when she left Homestead for a shopping trip with her two daughters. She left her 6-year-old son with her grandmother.

According to an arrest report, Sierra accompanied Machado and her daughters to the Mall of the Americas in Machado’s gold Nissan Altima.

When Machado received a phone call from another man, the two began to argue. Sierra grabbed a knife in the car and stabbed her.

He then drove Machado and her children back to their former home in Flagami, less than two miles from the mall.

There, Sierra locked the daughters in an adjacent bedroom and tied up Machado in the master bedroom, demanding the password to her phone.

Using a plastic bag, he suffocated her. After she died, Sierra raped her, according to the report.

Then, he turned his attention to the children, according to the police report by Miami-Dade Detective Juan Chaidez. The oldest daughter, Julia had knocked on the door asking to go to the bathroom. Sierra allowed her out and suffocated her. He suffocated Daniela, who had fallen asleep. According to the report, Sierra returned the master bedroom, where Julia’s body was, and raped her.

He placed all three bodies in the closet, cleaned the inside of the house and left.