SOUTH MIAMI, Fla. – A Hialeah man went to South Miami and lit a man’s car on fire Thursday morning, all because his ex-girlfriend was staying with him after their breakup, according to police.
According to a South Miami police report, police and firefighters responded to the 6000 block of Southwest 76th Street just before 6 a.m. to find a blue Honda Civic engulfed in flames.
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Police first talked to a man walking his dog, who said he noticed a “strange figure” in the area wearing all black with a white baseball cap, according to the report. After the witness returned to his apartment, he saw the “suspicious” man again, running away from the complex and into a beige Volkswagen Beetle.
At that point, police said the witness saw the Civic ablaze. He would knock on his neighbors’ doors, including that of the Civic’s owner, who told police he had no idea who set his car on fire.
But his female friend had an idea. Police said she was undergoing a separation with her ex-boyfriend, Pier Vincenzo Lodedo, and was staying with the victim, whom she considers her “brother.”
She told investigators she believed that Lodedo, 44, set the man’s car on fire as “vengeance” for her leaving him and said her ex was “jealous” and sought to “make him (the victim) pay for everything,” the report states.
Police said audio messages backed up her story. Detectives went to Lodedo’s apartment in the 300 block of East 33rd Street in Hialeah later that morning, took him to the South Miami police station for questioning and then arrested him.
Authorities said they found trace evidence of gasoline on the charred Civic.
Lodedo, an Italian national, was being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a charge of second-degree arson as of late Friday morning. He was given a $7,500 bond.