MIAMI – A 64-year-old man confessed to killing a man amid a landlord-tenant dispute at the Colonial Acres Mobile Home Park in Miami-Dade County’s Pinewood, police said.
Leonardo Pablo Mora told detectives that he and the man got into an argument that turned into a fistfight amid anger over a suspension of a mobile home’s water supply, according to police.
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Mora said he grabbed a firearm and shot the man in the upper abdomen once on Saturday afternoon in the area of Northwest 10 Avenue and 96 Street, according to the police arrest report.
The victim was John Forteza, a father of three and the tenant’s son, according to a family friend and a relative who shared the link to a GoFundMe page raising funds to benefit Forteza’s family.
Detectives arrested Mora shortly after midnight on Sunday in Doral and corrections officers booked him at about 2:30 a.m., at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
Mora appeared before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Mindy S. Glazer, who denied him bond on Monday and found probable cause for charges of second-degree murder with a weapon and carrying a concealed firearm.
Miami-Dade court records show Mora was arrested for drinking in public in 2001 and for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in 2008. Prosecutors dropped both cases. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch will be presiding over the murder case.
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Local 10 News Assignment Desk Editor Frine Gomez contributed to this report.