Otaola cleared in stalking case. No evidence of threats by mayoral candidate, judge says
A Miami-Dade County judge on Friday dismissed a stalking complaint against Alexander Otaola, ruling there was no proof that the YouTube host and mayoral candidate threatened a man on his show.
“Given the defendant is a social media influencer ... I would have expected voluminous evidence,” Judge Yara Lorenzo Klukas said during an afternoon hearing of the civil proceeding brought by a private investigator claiming public harassment by the conservative host and Miami-Dade
County mayor hopeful. “There is none.”
The plaintiff, Jose Carrillo, said he felt endangered after Otaola began insulting him on his popular Spanish-language YouTube show, “Hola! Ota-Ola,” in 2023 after Carrillo served court papers at Otaola’s rural compound outside Homestead.
But Carrillo couldn’t point to footage or audio where Otaola mentioned him by name ahead of his filing the stalking complaint in February.
Otaola acknowledged naming Carrillo after the suit was filed, which resulted in a restraining order against the host and a forced temporary surrender of his firearms to a Miami police station for the duration of the case.
“I’m pleased with the American justice system,” Otaola, 44, said in Spanish after the verdict. “As always.”
The proceedings highlighted Otaola’s unique role in the 2024 mayoral race, where the Republican is using his niche online standing as a conservative Cuban-American influencer to make a run for the top job in county government under a pledge to rid MiamiDade of alleged communist influences.
He testified that the nearly $300,000 he has raised to challenge the county’s Democratic mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, came from his audience.
While he wore a blue suit and a white tee, five people with him wore “Otaola for Mayor” shirts or baseball caps. In all, 15 people were part of the Otaola entourage, including two men in black he identified as security guards.
“I have a lot of death threats done by the Cuban regime,” he said through a translator during a brief interview before the trial. “The Cuban regime considers me a terrorist.”
Carrillo, a recently retired investigator, said he worried for his safety after he drew Otaola’s attention for serving papers in an unrelated court case.
The grandfather in his 60s testified that Otaola began making veiled threats by describing him as the bearded bald guy to viewers — at one point claiming that Carrillo was a communist.
Carrillo told Judge Klukas that it was Otaola’s devoted audience that worried him most of all.
“I don’t necessarily fear he is going to do some
They also say Hollis has a constitutional right to share published accounts of her son’s death and her resulting legal battle online.
“She has every right, under the Constitution, to post a news story. It is her First Amendment right,” Natahly Soler, one of Gamaly Hollis’ attorneys, told the Miami Herald. “You can’t restrict a person’s First Amendment right to post something that is public.”
The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request from the Herald to comment on the office’s motion to revoke Hollis’ bail.
Richard Hollis was shot during a chaotic encounter on June 15, 2022 — in one of a number of police calls to the family’s Peppermill Apartments home in Kendale Lakes.
Responding to a neighbor’s call about a disturbance, officers tried to persuade Richard Hollis open the door and leave the unit. When he failed to do so, Pino kicked in the apartment door, fired his taser, and then shot Richard Hollis, who was yelling about his food being poisoned and wielding two kitchen knives.
Gamaly Hollis was within feet of her son when he was killed.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office — both of which routinely investigate police-involved shootings — cleared Pino of any wrongdoing, concluding that Hollis’ refusal to drop his knives left both his mother and police in harm’s way.
Although it is standard procedure for officers to be benched during a useof-force investigation, Pino, instead, continued to patrol the same neighborhood where Hollis was killed. While the shooting was being reviewed, the department also designated him a field training officer and assigned a junior officer to learn from him.
In the ensuing weeks, Gamaly Hollis visited the Miami-Dade police’s Hammocks division several times. She said she was seeking the department’s report on her son’s death but also wanted to speak with the man who shot him. On Aug. 22, 2022, Hollis confronted Pino at a crime scene and accused him of murdering her son.
“You killed my son,” Hollis said to Pino repeatedly in Spanish, according to body camera footage.
“Maybe if you did a better job, there wouldn’t be a problem,” Pino is captured saying in response.
After that encounter, she was charged with aggravated stalking, resisting arrest and trespassing. She then shifted to social media, sharing photos she obtained from Pino’s accounts of him and his family.
On Nov. 7, 2022, Pino was granted a one-year injunction, ordering Hollis to stay away from him and cease posting his pictures on social media
The stalking charge was reduced to a misdemeanor, and the trespass charge was dropped. But Hollis still faces a maximum of nearly two years imprisonment on the remaining charges.
At the April 19 bond hearing, Assistant State Attorney Alecsander Kohn and defense attorneys sparred over who was the victim in the tragedy surrounding Richard Hollis’ death and his mother’s subsequent arrest.
Kohn said prosecutors and police were strongly opposed to releasing Hollis on her promise to appear in court for trial — the option most favored by her attorneys. “I reached out to all respective parties being the victim in this case — Officer Pino, as well as the [Police Benevolent Association] who is the voice of law enforcement.
“After conversations with both of them, there are grave concerns with respect to releasing Ms. Hollis on her own recognizance,” Kohn said. The PBA is a union that represents Miami-Dade police officers.
Soler responded that Hollis was the “real victim” in the case, telling the judge that Pino had “perjured himself” when he testified about the Aug. 22, 2022, confrontation — an encounter that stands as the basis for the stalking charge. Soler said her office had asked prosecutors “over and over and over again” — to no avail — to review body-camera footage of the encounter to determine for themselves who was telling the truth about the threat the grieving mother posed.
“It is unjust for Ms. Hollis to be spending one more second in jail for something … that was her every single right to do.”
Steadman Stahl, the PBA’s president, said Friday night that it was “unfortunate that a life was taken, and no officer relishes that or wants that to happen.” But, he added, the shooting “was investigated and [Pino] was cleared of any wrongdoing.”
Stahl defended Pino against claims that he misrepresented what happened the night Hollis was arrested. “That may be an allegation that the mother is alleging but I do not believe that he did perjure himself,” Stahl said.
“At some point, the mother has to stop showing up on scenes and causing disruptions,” Stahl added. “If she feels that there’s a issue that needs to be reinvestigated through multiple agencies, we’ll be glad to look at it. But the officer was acting within the scope of duty.”
Following the April 19 hearing, Hollis was released on $1,000 bond — $500 for each of two charges — after spending nearly a year in jail for violating the order to stay away from Pino, and to cease posting pictures of him, his family or his house on social media. Because Hollis has lost a job and apartment since being jailed, her attorneys say she has been forced to live in her car.
The new motion filed by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office seeks to revoke that bond. In his pleading, Kohn argued that Rivera Correa imposed conditions on Hollis’ release, including
“that she is not to use the internet [unless] it’s for paying bills online, ordering groceries or other necessities”.
“Despite the court’s order,” Kohn wrote, Hollis “has taken numerous opportunities throughout the past 24 hours to post to social media, namely, Facebook, regarding various aspects of the case.”
“This behavior is in direct violation of a court order and condition of her release.”
The motion included several versions of the story first reported by the Miami Herald, including versions from Yahoo.com, MSN.com and NBCMiami.com. Court filings don’t show Hollis making any comments about the news stories.
One of the purposes of bail, Kohn wrote, was to “protect the community against unreasonable danger” from those accused of committing a crime. He added: “It is clear [Hollis] is an inherent danger to the community and should therefore have her bond or pretrial release revoked.”
Soler, who is the public defender’s county court chief, argued prosecutors are misreading the terms of Hollis’ release. Abstaining from social media was a restriction only for an option of house arrest – not if she was able to post bail, which she did. Rivera Correa left Hollis both options as alternatives for release, Soler said.
But, Soler said, even if such a condition were imposed, it could not withstand the scrutiny of First Amendment protection. The prosecution motion is scheduled to be heard on Monday.
“This is not a murder case,” Soler told the Miami Herald. “Even if [Hollis] had been prohibited from making any type of Internet posting, posting articles already published to warn the community is purely protected by the First Amendment.”