Sun Sentinel Broward Edition

Suspect in manslaught­er argues self-defense

- By Rafael Olmeda Staff writer DEFENSE, 3B

It looked, at first, like a case of road rage.

Fakhradeen Muhammad Knight and his girlfriend were driving away from a party when they stopped behind a Chevy Impala that took more than a minute to move beyond a stop sign near Claridge Drive and Miramar Parkway. Knight honked the horn and got out of his car.

Minutes later, Knight, 38, was fighting for his life, stabbed five times during a fight with the driver and passenger of the Impala. One of those wounds was to the heart. Knight didn’t survive.

But on Friday afternoon, the driver of the Impala took the stand in a Broward courtroom to say Knight was the instigator of the fatal brawl.

Demetrius Elder, 44, of Miami, said Knight was the aggressor in the August 2014 encounter, portraying it as a sudden, unprovoked attack on his Armando Baptista,

“Muhammad was on top of March [Baptista], throwing punches,” Elder said. “He had something in his hand. It was green and kind of shiny.”

Defense lawyers Gabe Ermine and Tamara Curtis sought to portray the confrontat­ion as an extension of a fight that had taken place a month earlier involving Baptista and another man, who did not testify Friday. passenger, of Hollywood. Someone had allegedly called Knight to a party in Miramar specifical­ly to fight with Baptista in retaliatio­n for that earlier encounter, according to the defense.

But much of that argument did not make its way to Broward Circuit Judge Ernest Kollra’s courtroom because of hearsay rules and witnesses who were out of town. The attorneys are asking the judge to dismiss the

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