FLORIDA CITY, Fla. – A 43-year-old man was sentenced this week to 16 years in federal prison for shooting at a U.S. Postal Service mail carrier in Florida City.
Charlie Holley, of Florida City, was convicted by a federal jury of forcibly assaulting a federal employee, brandishing and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a violent crime, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of ammunition by a convicted felon.
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He was sentenced on Wednesday.
According to a criminal complaint written by a U.S. postal inspector, the female postal worker was on her route in the area of Northwest 6th Street and 7th Avenue around 1 p.m. on June 21, 2021, when she went to deliver a small, plastic-wrapped parcel addressed to “Whitey White.”
She told investigators that she saw a man, later identified as Holley, looking out of a second-floor window and yelling toward her. She had recognized him from delivering previous packages to “Whitey White.”
As she approached the front door, the carrier said she noticed Holley pointing a black rifle at her, according to the complaint, which says he then instructed her to leave the package on the ground and open it.
She refused, saying she wasn’t allowed to open customers’ mail, after which investigators say Holley instructed her to move to the side.
The postal worker quickly left and got in her vehicle to drive away when “she heard a loud thud, which she believed was Holley shooting at her,” the complaint says.
A one-inch bullet hole was found in the back of the postal truck, authorities say. Nobody was hit.
Police said Holley barricaded himself in a home before ultimately surrendering to a Miami-Dade Special Response Team after a nearly two-hour standoff.
Investigators later found a long rifle in Holley’s residence, and witnesses say he was pointing a rifle at neighbors from the second-story window prior to the incident involving the mail carrier.
They also found a shirt in his home that had “Whitey” printed on it.