MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – The two women shot inside a southwest Miami-Dade County house Sunday were friends. One of them, Local 10 News has learned, lived there with the father of her two children, those kids, and his family.
She was five months pregnant when her children’s father allegedly came in with a gun, killing her and her friend.
Michael Ledesma, 32, also shot his step-father, sending him to the hospital, before taking his own life at the home on the corner of Southwest 191st Terrace and Southwest 129th Avenue.
“He shot one, here, and one in the kitchen,” said Estella Dorta, a friend to a family that is now forever changed.
Pedro Pablo is the man police say ran from the home Sunday afternoon, bleeding, after he was shot by his stepson.
Dorta says that when Ledesma pointed the gun at his mother, it was out of bullets, giving her time to scoop up her grandsons — Ledesma’s children, ages 7 and 9 — and escape.
Seconds later, police and SWAT swarmed the area.
One neighbor’s doorbell camera shows a Miami-Dade officer, rifle in hand, knocking on the door before crossing the street to the next home.
“They approached the house from the front — and they kept saying in Spanish to drop the gun and to get on the floor,” said neighbor Rey Rubio.
Cell phone video from a different angle shows police, posted up outside the house, trying to get the shooter inside to come out.
Then came what sounded like a gunshot.
Police set off a flashbang, eventually making their way inside, where they found their shooter dead along with two women he killed.
Pablo, the shooter’s stepfather, is still at the hospital but doing well.
Local 10 News spoke with Ledesma’s mother on the phone. She says he was her only son. He had recently suffered from some mental health issues, and they tried getting him some psychiatric help as recently as a couple of weeks ago.