Murder trial starts, years later
Boca baker was killed in 2007
When the bullet pierced the driver’s side window, Yvonne Salomon says she thought it sounded like a rock.
Then she watched her husband of 49 years collapsing on the steering wheel, a horrific end to a Hanukkah shopping trip that she relives whenever prosecutors call upon her.
In the nearly 10 years since retired kosher baker Samuel Salomon’s death, his widow has cried while telling numerous juries about the West Delray tragedy. She’ll share her story again this week for yet another trial in the high-profile Three Amigos case.
Jury selection is set to begin today for
Raul Osvaldo Andino, the suspected leader of a Miami criminal ring accused in a violent armed robbery at the Three Amigos grocery store west of Boynton Beach and Salomon’s shooting minutes later.
Authorities say the 32-year-old Andino, whose street name was “Choco,” eluded capture for years after the Nov. 30, 2007, events. But eventually he was captured getting off a plane in Spain and later extradited to South Florida in 2015 to face first-degree murder, attempted murder, robbery and other charges.
Over the years, five of his Three Amigos co-defendants were convicted at several trials and retrials and are serving multiple terms of life in state prison.
And a sixth man, Nelson Urbina, 38, took a plea deal on a second-degree murder charge in 2011 and is serving an 18-year prison term. He’s expected to testify about his accomplices’ plans for the robbery and his role in acquiring a car for the job.
Andino’s court-appointed lawyer, Michael Maher of West Palm Beach, says his client naturally became the target after the other men were found guilty as charged.
“Who are they likely going to blame?” Maher said. “To me it’s kind of an overcharged case.”
Maher declined Monday to discuss his trial strategy, but he could adopt arguments from the co-defendants that the robbery and murder can’t be linked.
The evidence from prosecutors Lauren Godden and John Parnofiello includes surveillance video from Three Amigos, in the 9800 block of West Boynton Beach Boulevard, where customers were tied up at gunpoint.
Longtime store manager Sian Kiat “Sam” Koh is expected to sit on the witness stand and calmly recount the horror, as he has done at the previous trials.
After the gun-toting robbers fled the store about 1 p.m. with more than $50,000, Koh has said he got in his Mercedes and followed the suspects’ Dodge Magnum south on Florida’s Turnpike, while calling 911 during the 100-mph chase.
Andino, the so-called mastermind of the robbery, was sitting in the right front passenger seat of the Dodge, according to a 2011 report from the Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office.
Once the robbers realized Koh was in pursuit, they pulled off at Atlantic Avenue, then made a Uturn, and one of them fired four shots in Koh’s direction, according to court records.
At that time, the Salomons were heading home after shopping. They were sitting in their Ford Windstar at a red light on West Atlantic Avenue, when suddenly there was a loud noise.
Yvonne Salomon testified in 2015 she didn’t realize that a bullet had struck her 70-year-old husband but she watched him quickly lose consciousness.
“I prayed to God,” she said. “Please don’t let him die.”
After the errant bullet hit Salomon in the chest, he managed to put the minivan in neutral before losing consciousness. The Air Force veteran had virtually no chance at survival from the wound, the medical examiner has said.
A son of Polish Holocaust survivors, Salomon was raised in Cuba and later had four sons and became a grandfather. He formerly owned kosher bakeries in New York and Florida and served customers from a Boca Raton shop until his death.
One of Andino’s co-defendants, Victor Salastier Diaz, testified at a 2016 retrial that during Koh’s pursuit, co-defendant Roger Rodriguez suddenly raised his gun and started firing out the window in the direction of Koh.
While Diaz admitted his role in the Three Amigos robbery, his attorney argued the murder charge was improper because the shooting happened too far away from the “immediate scene” of the holdup.
But prosecutors told Diaz’s jury it was one continuous criminal series of events — from the store robbery to the highway pursuit to the fatal shooting.
It’s unclear where Andino was after the robbery, but a warrant for his arrest was issued in 2011. The following year he was apprehended getting off a plane in Spain, but the process of extraditing him to the United States took three years, records show.
Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Glenn Kelley called for 90 prospective jurors to be questioned about serving on Andino’s trial, which is expected to take a week.