MIAMI — Three Miami-Dade police officers who were charged in the death of a UPS driver during a 2019 shootout at a busy intersection are immune from prosecution, a Broward judge ruled Monday.

Broward Circuit Court Judge Ernest Kollra sided with suspended Miami-Dade police officers Richard Santiesteban, 35, Leslie Lee, 59, and Rodolfo Mirabal, 40. The officers had argued that Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law barred their prosecutions.

The ruling came more than a month after Kollra heard arguments from prosecutors and the officers’ attorneys.

In his order, Kollra said the officers had a reasonable belief of an imminent threat. For the judge, there was “no question” that the officers were responding to “a threat initiated and continued by two armed convicted felons who shot and hit multiple Victims, Civilian and Law Enforcement and did not cease this mass shooting event until they were neutralized ... ”

“This “was an unusual and highly aggressive situation beginning with two armed convicted felons committing multiple forcible felonies at the jewelry store then shooting first at civilians and escalating the situation by hijacking a UPS truck and taking its driver as a hostage, followed by shooting at multiple Officers,” Kollra wrote in his order.

The Stand Your Ground law allows a person — and police officers — in the state to take up to deadly action if they feel their life is threatened. The fleeing felon law allows police to shoot at a suspect if they believe that person is a danger to society while trying to avoid custody.

The officers, along with their colleague Jose Mateo, 33, were indicted on manslaughter charges in June 2024. They pleaded not guilty and have been suspended without pay.

UPS driver Frank Ordóñez, 27, and Rick Cutshaw, 70, were killed after a botched Coral Gables jewelry store heist led to the carjacking of the UPS truck and its driver, a high-speed Interstate chase across Miami-Dade and Broward and a hail of gunfire at the traffic-packed intersection of Miramar Parkway and Flamingo Road during the afternoon rush hour.

Last September, Kollra also found that the Stand Your Ground law barred Mateo’s prosecution.

In a statement Monday, the Broward State Attorney’s Office said prosecutors plan to appeal Kollra’s ruling to the Fourth District Court of Appeal. Prosecutors previously appealed in Mateo’s case.

“It is our belief that Stand Your Ground immunity does not apply in matters involving innocent bystanders, like Frank Ordonez and Richard Cutshaw, who presented no danger to officers,” the statement said. “In this incident, two innocent men were killed, and the lives of numerous other innocent bystanders were endangered.”

When reached Monday afternoon, Ordóñez’s stepfather, Joe Merino, said he and his family lost faith in the judicial system after the judge found Mateo immune from prosecution.

“After the decision, we stopped attending the hearings,” Merino said. “Judge Ernest (Kollra) is not going to prosecute any of the officers and other officers are not going to go against other officers. It’s a family or a mafia.”

Chaos during rush hour

The suspended officers were charged after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement identified five bullets from Ordóñez’s autopsy. Two linked back to Santiesteban, and the rest to Mateo, Lee and Mirabal. A single bullet was recovered during Cutshaw’s autopsy. That one was tied to Mirabal, the report states.

According to the FDLE, investigators determined 20 officers fired up to 219 rounds during the mayhem. Also killed that day: Lamar Alexander and Ronnie Jerome Hill, two ex-cons whose exploits that day began with a bungled attempt to rob a Coral Gables jewelry store.

Hill and Alexander then hijacked the UPS truck driven by Ordóñez — with the driver still in it. That ignited a high-speed chase — and the shootout that ended with Hill, Alexander, Ordóñez and Cutshaw dead.

_____

©2026 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.