Mother demands justice after fatal shooting at hookah bar
Danilee Hernández, 23, was killed after being caught in a shootout in October
Seven men were arrested in connection to an Oct. 9 shootout at the Red Star Restaurant & Hookah Bar in Kissimmee that killed 23-year-old Danilee Hernández, a woman her mother described as “my best friend.”
The arrests of the suspects was announced for the first time at a press conference Friday. Five of the men — Jose Cruz-Ortiz, Juan Reyes, Daniel Cruz, Jonathan Hernández-Brioso, Jesús OjedaGarcía — face charges of first-degree murder and attempted murder for the shooting. Mylam Peters faces firing a gun in public and carrying a concealed weapon without a permit charges while Joshua Medina-Rosa is facing charges of accessory after the fact, tampering with evidence and lying to authorities .
According to court documents, many of the men had been arrested within the first month since the shooting, while jail records show Hernández-Brioso and Ojeda-García were booked Dec. 3 and on Thursday respectively. Peters and Medina-Rosa have since been released on bond.
Joined by Osceola Sheriff Marcos López, Michelle Rodríguez described her daughter as being dedicated to her family. As the oldest child of a single mother, she would help around the house and walk her younger brother Rodrigo to school.
“We did everything together,” Rodríguez said. “She would paint my nails, she could call me and ask, ‘What color should I do?’ We had different work schedules ... but it was one of those things we tried to do together.”
The family had moved to Central Florida from New York about 18 months ago, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. A student at Polk State College with dreams of becoming a nurse, she was out with friends that night when the shooting started.
Authorities said she was sitting in her car when she took off running after shots were fired and was struck by a stray bullet. Rodríguez said she started calling 911 after Hernández didn’t come home that night and wasn’t answering her phone. Investigators later showed her surveillance video of what happened, with shots ringing out around 5 a.m. that morning.
Hernández was pronounced dead at the scene.
“I begged them, don’t let my daughter’s death be a cold case,” said Rodríguez. “I had to sit there and watch what happened to my daughter, and I couldn’t live if we didn’t find who did it.”
López said the shooting happened as part of an altercation between the suspects and another group of people inside the hookah bar that spilled into the parking lot outside. Other than Hernández’s death and a man who reportedly suffered a gunshot wound, no other injuries were reported.
The Red Star Restaurant & Hookah Bar has since shut its doors.
“This was a senseless murder. It never should have happened,” López said.
While other crimes have largely gone down nationally, murders have increased in 2020 and 2021 as people return to normal life following a pandemic heading into its second year. Gun homicides have increased slightly in 2021, with 19,868 people being killed as of Friday compared to 19,482 in 2020, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which included accidents and self-defense in its data.
The men accused of murdering Hernández face at least a lifelong prison sentence, if convicted. And Rodríguez hopes justice is served in her daughter’s death.
“I’m doing life out here now without my child, and I hope they get that same sentence. Life,” Rodríguez said. “Because I have to live the rest of mine without my best friend.”