MIAMI — Newly-released body camera footage shows the arrest of a hit-and-run suspect in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood.
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office released about three minutes of video out of hours of material on Tuesday. The video was taken during the wee hours of May 30, after Miami police say Ivana Gomez, 32, struck 41-year-old Katherine Kipnis with her car and left her for dead.
“When she struck Ms. Kipnis, she hit the victim so hard that the victim’s head went into the vehicle, through the windshield and some of the victim’s hair got caught on the passenger’s seatbelt of the defendant’s vehicle,” a prosecutor said in court following Gomez’s arrest.
Two minutes’ worth of the video is silenced, but it shows police on the scene.
The crash happened around 1:15 a.m. near Southwest 22nd Avenue and Eighth Street.
Police say Gomez fled after the impact. Witnesses told police they found her at Beacom Boulevard and Seventh Street and she was taken into custody.
According to her arrest report, while in the back of the police car, she “spontaneously stated that ‘it was just a homeless person that I hit and it is just an accident.’”
The video obtained by Local 10 News does not depict that alleged statement. When the audio picks up, Gomez is in the back seat.
Gomez struggles to get out with her hands behind her back and the female officer searches her.
Records show Gomez was still locked up as of Tuesday.
Friends and family of the victim, known as Katie, remembered her spirit.
“My daughter was vivacious, lovable, everyone really liked her,” her father, Daniel Kipnis, told Local 10 News in an interview after the crash.
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