Brevard County Deputy Sheriff's Office (BCSO) Deputy Jafet Santiago-Miranda executed two black teenagers for trying to drive past him. The shooting was caught on his dash camera where you can clearly see that the vehicle he shot at was turning right in an effort to drive past him (see video below). The vehicle was obviously going to great lengths to evade the officers without actually hitting them. A slow motion version of the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKvDU1E_3aw) shows that Deputy Santiago-Miranda started shooting at the front of the car and kept shooting at the side of the car after the vehicle drove by him slightly.
This is not the first time that Deputy Santiago-Miranda has been involved with serious criminal activity. According to a background check he was charged with Burglary of an Occupied Dwelling in 2007. One website claims that this resulted in a conviction according to the Osceola County Clerk of the Court website (see source link above this article), but when we visited the court website (https://courts.osceolaclerk.com/BenchmarkWeb/Home.aspx/Search) and typed in the case number we only found convictions for someone named Israel Miranda. Those convictions were for Burglary of an Occupied Dwelling, Aggravated Assault with a Firearm, and Possession of a Firearm by a Convicted Felon. The website we are linking to has screenshots that appear to have listed Santiago-Miranda as co-defendant in that case, but we found no evidence in our background check that would have explained any grounds to convict Santiago-Miranda of being a convicted felon with a gun at that time. We think that these convictions are actually for the main defendant in the case. Our background check service lists Santiago-Miranda's burglary charge under the case number R 0700CR 004724 while the Israel Miranda case has the case number 2007 CF 004719 CR. Our background check service lists Israel Miranda as a likely 1st generation relative of Santiago-Miranda with an extensive criminal record. We believe that Deputy Santiago-Miranda had been a co-defendant in that case, but that the charges against him were eventually dropped. We could find no criminal records associated with Santiago-Miranda on the Osceola County website, but there were a slew of traffic cases. We think that perhaps Santiago-Miranda noticed the article listing the court records and asked the court to strike his name from that case.
The website we cited as the source for this story also claimed that Santiago-Miranda had been charged with domestic violence earlier this year and accurately reported the name of his wife. We found that case on the Brevard County website and concluded that it is not a criminal case (https://vmatrix1.brevardclerk.us/beca/all_results.cfm?x=4BB88F8C738788AC99BFD224CC0A2DDB79DFE7BF9D13E70DFB05EAD5DFCBC76526FA6ABFEBD34D16D7B733171ED4D4FE). It appears to be a civil matter in which a Mrs. Santiago obtained an injunction against Deputy Santiago-Miranda based on allegations of domestic violence involving children. Such cases are typically brought by women against men they claim abused them in front of their kids. The case was eventually dismissed.
Back to the matter at hand, the video clearly shows that Deputy Santiago-Miranda did not need to shoot AJ Coombs and Sincere Pierce. That is an easy conclusion to make based on the way the vehicle was turning away from Deputy Santiago-Miranda and the fact that Deputy Santiago-Miranda continued shooting into the side of the vehicle. Even if the vehicle had driven straight at him he could have easily jumped on the hood of his car to avoid getting hit. We believe that this is an unjustified homicide and Santiago-Miranda needs to be held accountable. Until then he is a danger to the community that people need to know about.
Public records contain the following information about Jafet Santiago-Miranda:
DOB: AUG-1986
AGE: 34
Last Known Home Address:
1503 LUND AVE
KISSIMMEE, FL 34744-3031
We are exempting Deputy Santiago-Miranda from our usual courtesy of censoring home addresses of law enforcement officers because we believe that he is a danger to the community that his neighbors need to know about. We would also support peacefully protesting at this location, but we ask that in such cases nobody damage property or people.
The other deputy involved was Deputy Carson Hendren. She can be seen in the dash camera footage as the blonde on the right standing behind the door of her patrol vehicle. We are not aware of her firing any shots and we hope that she testifies truthfully about the unnecessary use of force by Santiago-Miranda.