Stand Your Ground law in spotlight as Miramar family disputes shooter’s account
A fatal shooting inside a Miramar apartment has become the latest case to test the boundaries of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, with police weighing whether the man who pulled the trigger acted in self-defense — and the victim’s family insisting the narrative that cops have been giving does not match who their daughter was.
Makayla Mendez, 22, was shot and killed early Friday, April 24, inside a unit at the Miramar Lakes apartments on North Preserve Way.
As of April 30, no charges have been filed. Police have not officially released Mendez’s name or the name of the man who told them he shot her.
Stand Your Ground
The case sits in the legal gray zone that has made Florida’s self-defense statute one of the most scrutinized in the country: A shooter who is alive to tell his version of events and a victim who cannot.
The man who called 911 around 2 a.m. that day told dispatchers he was being robbed in his apartment.
When Miramar officers arrived, they found Mendez suffering from a gunshot wound. She was rushed to Memorial General Hospital, where she later died.
The shooter told police he and Mendez knew each other and had been “casually dating,” but said he opened fire after discovering her robbing his apartment, according to Miramar police.
Florida’s Stand Your Ground law allows people to use deadly force without a duty to retreat if they are in a place they have a right to be, provided they reasonably believe such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or serious bodily harm.
The law also makes it harder to fully investigate cases in which a Stand Your Ground defense is invoked by limiting law enforcement’s ability to arrest someone who claims to have acted in self-defense.
Conflicting stories
Mendez’s family rejects the characterization of the victim’s relationship with the shooter. Her mother, Karolyn Taylor, told NBC 6 that the man was not a casual acquaintance at all — he was her daughter’s boyfriend.
“They’re portraying her wrong,” Taylor said.
The dispute over the relationship is not a minor detail. The framing of what happened inside that apartment — a stranger committing a burglary versus an intimate-partner dispute that escalated — can shape whether a shooting is treated as justifiable self-defense or a homicide.
In practice, the statute gives investigators and prosecutors significant discretion at the front end of a case. If detectives conclude the shooter’s account is credible and consistent with the physical evidence, charges may never be filed.
If prosecutors bring charges, defendants can request a pretrial immunity hearing where, since a 2017 amendment, the burden shifts to the state to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant was not acting in lawful self-defense. In August, at one such hearing in a Broward County courtroom, three Miami-Dade police officers involved in the shooting death of UPS driver Frank Ordonez in December 2019 on Miramar Parkway had their manslaughter charges dropped under the Stand Your Ground law.
The three officers, along with a fourth earlier, convinced a Broward judge, saying they opened fire on the fleeing jewelry store robbers because they feared for their lives.
Ordonez, taken hostage by the men, was shot and killed in the crossfire.
Once a shooting is categorized as a potential Stand Your Ground case, the path to charges narrows considerably. Cases in which a shooter’s account goes initially unchallenged have repeatedly drawn scrutiny from civil rights advocates and criminal justice reformers in Florida.
For now, those questions remain open in Miramar.
On April 29, police told the Miramar News that the Mendez case remains active.
“The detectives are still investigating, and no other information is forthcoming at this time,” spokeswoman Janice McIntosh said.
Audio from a 911 call released by police captured a frantic caller pleading for quick help from police and fire rescue. Beyond that, the circumstances leading up to the shooting remain unclear.