MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Employees servicing an ice cooler behind a northwest Miami-Dade bar made a disturbing discovery on Friday, deputies said: a man’s bloodied body.
It led to the arrest of a 35-year-old man on a second-degree murder charge on Tuesday.
According to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, Reddy Ice workers servicing the Chicagoan Bar at 10702 NW Seventh Ave. made the discovery at around 3 p.m. Friday.
After they alerted employees, deputies and medics responded to the bar, located in the unincorporated Pinewood area. The victim, who remained unidentified as of Wednesday afternoon, was pronounced dead at the scene.
“If it’s who I think it is, I see him every day,” a woman who works in the area told Local 10 News. “So it’s sad to hear.”
According to an arrest report, authorities were able to identify the suspect as Oscar Rivera-Peraza “via fraudulent identification credentials that were left on scene and subsequently collected by homicide investigators.”
Deputies said they located Rivera-Peraza, who is homeless, on Tuesday and took him in for questioning. They said he gave a “full confession.”
“(Rivera-Peraza) stated that he armed himself with a metal pipe and struck the victim multiple times before placing him within the (Reddy Ice) cooler,” an MDSO investigator wrote in the report.
A motive for the killing was not mentioned in the arrest report.
Rivera-Peraza was taken to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, where he was being held as of Wednesday afternoon.
His bond was listed in online records as “to be set.”