Family of killed UPS driver sues

Seek body camera video, radio transmissions of police shootout

MIRAMAR – The family of the UPS driver killed in last year’s large police shootout is tired of waiting for answers after nine long months.

On Monday, Frank Ordonez’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Broward County and asked the six police departments involved in the wild shootout to release copies of body-worn camera footage and patrol car radio transmissions.

Ordonez was an 27-year-old UPS driver who was taken hostage by robbers and led on a wild, high-speed chase from Miami through Broward in December 2019. He was slain in a hail of over 200 bullets between police and the jewelry store robbers in the middle of a Miramar thoroughfare.

However, few answers have been released since his death. To this date, no one knows whose bullets killed him or another innocent man, Richard Cutshaw, who was sitting in his car.

Since the tragic incident unfolded, the police departments involved in the matter and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which is investigating the incident, have remained mum on the subject.

All agencies have repeatedly declined to release basic information about the deadly encounter, which involved 20 police officers firing their weapons.

On Wednesday, the FDLE again de

clined to speak in response to news of the lawsuit. “FDLE’s investigation is currently active,” said a spokesman. “We have no other information to provide at this time.”

In the lawsuit, the family says that officers from the Miami Police Department, the Miami Dade Police Department,

the Doral Police Department, the Broward Sheriff’s Office, the Florida Highway Patrol, the Miramar Police Department and the Pembroke Pines Police Department violated a number of policies that led to Ordonez’s death.

They include failing to stop the truck before it reached a populated area, failing to negotiate before firing at the truck and failing to communicate. Experts

have made similar conclusions about police’s actions that day.

The lawsuit says that as a result of these policy failures, the chances of resolving the hostage scenario and rescuing Ordonez was “eliminated.”

The suit also includes a man named Carlos Lara, who said he was in the midst of the shootout and was one of many civilians who had their car used by the police as a shield for incoming gunfire. He said his car was shot and he was injured while trying to avoid gunfire.

In a news release, Ordonez’s family said that they — and the public — “have the right to know what happened, and how law enforcement reacted on this tragic day.”

Tom Cutshaw, the brother of Richard Cutshaw, echoed these statements in an interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

He said that just like the Ordonez family, he has heard nothing about what happened to his brother. “Not a word.”

He said his family has not filed a lawsuit because Cutshaw was never married and did not have any children. The only direct heir to his estate is his 99-year-old mother.

Although he has been in communication with the FDLE personally, he said he has already lost hope that he will ever find out the truth about how and why his brother died.

“If they don’t know by now, they will never know.”

Frank Ordonez