MIAMI — A 57-year-old homeless man is facing an attempted first-degree murder charge after Miami police said he severely beat another man lying on a downtown sidewalk early Friday morning.
Investigators said they were sent to Northeast First Avenue and Second Street at around 5:30 a.m., where they found the victim “lying in a pool of blood.”
According to an arrest report from the Miami Police Department, the victim had been in the street, “unconscious and (with) visible lacerations to the back of his head,” for more than an hour.
He was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital in critical condition, where staff said he “had several brain bleeds, a fractured skull and a frontal facial fracture.”
Surveillance video from a nearby business showed the beating, which happened just after 4:15 a.m., according to the report.
Police said the video showed a man, later identified as Lawrence Ray Archuleta, “holding what appeared to be a white blanket concealing an unknown object” and hitting the victim about 20 times.
Once finished, police said Archuleta “used the blanket to wipe the weapon and himself and threw the blanket on the ground next to the victim” and walked away, grabbed a shopping cart and put an object inside of a backpack.
Authorities said an officer saw a man matching Archuleta’s description walking with a shopping cart outside of MPD’s downtown headquarters just after 7:30 that evening.
Investigators said Archuleta “identified himself as the person on the CCTV footage who was walking with the shopping cart, advised that he has been residing across the street from the incident location for the past month and a half and acknowledged that he at one time owned a white and gray blanket.”
“(Archuleta) stated that inside his shopping cart, he has a small hatchet, a rock, and a knife for self-defense,” the report states.
As of Monday morning, Archuleta was being held without bond in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
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