MIAMI — Charges have been dropped against a Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office lieutenant who was accused of attacking a woman he met at a Miami nightclub, Local 10 News learned Tuesday.
Daniel Chala, a 30-year veteran of the agency, was initially arrested in April on charges of false imprisonment and battery.
The false imprisonment charge, however, was dropped in bond court the following day.
The remaining battery charge has also been dropped by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office following an investigation.
According to an arrest report from the Miami Police Department, officers responded to Chala’s apartment building on the morning of April 28 where they found the alleged victim who said that she had been assaulted by Chala.
Police said officers detained Chala as they further investigated what had occurred.
According to the report, a witness told police that she was laying down in bed when she heard someone knocking on her front door, yelling, “This guy is trying to kill me. He has my bags!”
The witness said she then walked to the door and looked through the peephole and could see the woman standing in front of her door, bleeding from the mouth.
According to the report, the witness opened the door and allowed the woman inside as she called the front desk and asked for police to be contacted.
The witness told police that the woman eventually walked back to Chala’s apartment, knocked on his door and asked him to return her belongings.
Police said Chala opened the door and placed the woman’s belongings in front of it, including tennis shoes and a purse, as the witness recorded the interaction.
According to the report, the woman claimed that she met Chala at the E11EVEN Miami nightclub earlier that morning and that when she was getting ready to leave he told her, “Let’s go to my place. I live alone.”
Police said the woman claimed that she went to Chala’s apartment and was “making out” with him on his bed when he asked her a question, which confused her since she had previously answered it.
The arrest report did not specify the question that Chala asked her.
According to the report, the woman then got up and walked toward the bedroom door, at which time Chala allegedly placed his arms around her neck and kissed her.
Police said he continued to hold the woman “in a tight grip, wrapping his arm tighter around the victim’s neck.”
The woman told police that she initially thought Chala’s actions were a “sexual engagement” so she went along with it, but his grip got tighter, at which time she told him, “Babe, you’re hurting me. Stop, stop.”
According to the report, the woman eventually “dropped her weight down to the floor, but the defendant continued to hold her head and neck with his arm as he leaned down in a face-to-face position.”
“The victim stated she then began to crawl backward towards the front door of the apartment unit as she yelled, ‘Stop, stop, stop. Let me go,’” the report stated.
According to the report, the woman then ran to several nearby apartment units before the witness answered the door.
Police said the woman had visible red marks on the right side of her neck and chin, as well as a broken right pinky nail and a partially broken right ring fingernail.
According to the report, Chala admitted to taking the woman home to his apartment but denied touching her, other than “kissing her on the hand.”
Police said he also denied having any kind of physical contact with any other woman that night, but when questioned about a make-up stain on his shirt, he replied, “Maybe I hugged a girl. I don’t know.”
“I’m most certainly innocent of this,” Chala told Local 10 News in April after posting his $1,000 bond. “I did not engage any kind of battery or rough play with her at all. I did not choke her… it’s all lies."
“Lt. Chala has served this community with distinction for more than three decades,” his attorney, Susy Ribero-Ayala, said in a statement. “He has consistently denied the allegations against him and is grateful the State Attorney’s Office recognized the charges against Lt. Chala were false and legally insufficient.
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