MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – There were tears and hugs on Tuesday after a judge allowed the pre-trial release of a 52-year-old man who stands accused of killing his 21-year-old son in Miami-Dade County.
David De Jesus Contreras is facing a charge of second-degree murder. Police officers reported Contreras confessed to fatally shooting his son Eric Contreras on Nov. 3 in Kendall.
“The evidence suggested the victim was kneeling — crouching down,” Assistant State Attorney Rachel Ariela Morales-Gellis said during a hearing to determine whether or not he should be granted bail.
Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge David H. Young listened to a 911 call David Contreras made after the shooting.
“I’d been fighting with my son and I lost it on him,” the distraught father said. “He wouldn’t stop.”
Prosecutors told the judge David Contreras had been violent with his son before. The defense had David Contreras’s lifelong friends testify to vouch for his character.
“We have a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type of situation,” the judge said. “To his friends in public, he was one way and home with his son with all these issues he was another.”
The witnesses described him as a doting father who wasn’t a danger to the community and described the victim as a son who caused his father anguish.
The judge described the conditions of Contreras’s house arrest, but not at his family home.
“He is going to be on total lockdown,” the judge said. “No, he’s not living with his loved ones.”