SOUTH BEACH, Fla. — Surveillance video released on Wednesday shows an armed burglar at a condominium in South Beach that is the subject of a $12 million negligence lawsuit in Miami-Dade County civil court.
Detectives reported the video shows Brian Lopez on June 17, after he broke into Flamingo Point in the West Avenue area, and made it to the North Tower’s 9th-floor hallway.
Kylee Holland was in the hallway to throw out the trash when Lopez, 31, held her at gunpoint and into her apartment, where her fiancé, Jacob Kirstein, and Gary Burns, their friend, were.
“No one, absolutely no one who lives in Flamigo Point, should ever have to experience what we did,” Holland recently said.
Once inside the apartment, Lopez ordered them to get on the ground and pistol-whipped Kirstein before stealing $1,500 in Zelle transfers, according to the Miami Beach police arrest report.
“I was knocked to the floor and the blood was squirting out of my head, while I made eye contact with my fiancée,” Kirstein recently said. “At that point, I could tell in her eyes, and in mine, that we both thought we were going to die.”
Lopez attempted to steal a car. He was at Bay Road and 16th Street when a Miami Beach detective stopped him, found Burns’s stolen cell phone in his pocket, and arrested him, records show.
Lopez, of Hialeah, a convicted felon also known as “King Lay Low,” was in prison from Dec. 7, 2016, to July 21, 2018, and from May 27, 2021, to Jan. 29 for drug and weapons charges.
Lopez appeared in Miami-Dade County court on June 18. A judge ordered him to stay away from the three victims and denied him bond, records show.
Court records show Miami-Dade prosecutors filed two cases against Lopez on June 18. County Circuit Judge Ariel Rodriguez is presiding over both.
One case is for burglary of an unoccupied dwelling and petit theft. The other, which is related to the civil lawsuit, is for robbery home invasion with a firearm, three counts of robbery with a deadly weapon, and burglary with assault or battery.
Attorney Bernardo Pimentel, II, represented the three victims in a civil lawsuit filed last month against MCZ/Centrum Flamingo II; Apartment Income REIT; Florida State Protection Unit, a security services provider; and Lopez. They are seeking $12 million in damages for negligence.
Corrections was holding Lopez on Wednesday at the Miami-Dade County Pre-Trial Detention Center.
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