Miami Police Officer Recovering from Brain Surgery after Attack by Suspect

By Charles Rabin

Source Miami Herald

A Miami police officer is recovering from brain surgery after a scuffle with a violent offender police said was nicknamed “Scarface.”

Jose Baez, 30, who patrols the Flagami neighborhood, was injured Friday when he and his partner couldn’t control a man wanted by police for threatening a friend with a machete and robbing him earlier in the week.

Baez, a seven-year veteran, was transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s trauma center by Miami Fire Rescue after being knocked unconscious. Doctors there removed blood from his brain that had accumulated from a skull fracture.

“He had surgery the first day. Right now, it’s the best-case scenario,” said Tommy Reyes, president of Miami’s Fraternal Order of Police. “But he’s still in ICU.”

The suspect, whose real name is Victor David Fernandez, is nicknamed Scarface because he has a scar on his left cheek, escaped Baez and his partner. Fernandez was taken into custody and arrested Saturday after another violent encounter, police said. This time, police said Fernandez tried to grab a cop’s gun and head butt an officer, before he was handcuffed.

“It was apparent that he didn’t want to go to jail,” said Miami Police Spokeswoman Kiara Delva. “ He knows he did a crime the previous day for robbery with a weapon, so he obviously tried to avoid officer’s trying to apprehend him.”

For Friday’s scuffle with Baez and his partner Sgt. Hilda Hinterschied, Fernandez, 33, has been charged with aggravated battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest with violence and fleeing from police. He’s also been charged with resisting arrest with violence during his second encounter with police on Saturday and with robbery with a deadly weapon from an incident in Little Haiti on Feb. 3, the day before he fought with Baez.

State records show Fernandez has a short but recent criminal history. He was arrested and convicted of a trespass charge in Orlando in November 2020. And, according to state records, Miami Police arrested him on Feb. 1 on a domestic violence charge. That case is still pending.

Miami-Dade records show Fernandez has been appointed a public defender and remained jailed Monday.

According to police and witnesses, Fernandez’s three-day spree of violence began just past noon last Thursday, when he used a machete to rip off a friend of 10 years. His friend told police that Fernandez picked him up at his home in a newer model, white Honda, and drove him to a nearby Publix, where the friend did two ATM withdrawls of $500 each. They tried to get a room at a Marriott on Biscayne Boulevard and 33rd Street, but were turned away, the man said.

So Fernandez drove north on Biscayne to 54th Street to a Shell Gas Station, where the man gave Fernandez $40 to fill up his tank. Then, the man said, in a foul mood, Fernandez drove west to Third Court and 55th Street, where he got out of the car opened the passenger door and “pointed a large black machete with a double handle at the victim’s abdominal area” and took the $1,000.

The man said Fernandez drove off. Then, 24 hours later, police encountered Fernandez after hotel staff at a Best Western at 4100 W. Flagler Street called them because a man wearing a gold chain and with a scar on the left side of his face and who goes by the name “Scarface,” was insulting a woman and staff.

When Baez and his partner got there, they were taken to room 518, where hotel staff said Fernandez had been staying. Several people in the room were told to leave and did so. Police found a firearm and ammunition, and Fernandez said he would retrieve it later. Police, apparently, had not yet linked him to the robbery the previous day.

When he showed up in the white Honda about an hour later, police tried to take him into custody. The incident report says he fled and Baez and his partner chased. When Fernandez looped back around and got into his car, the officers yanked him out. But he managed to wrestle away from their control and injure Baez in the process.

The next day, the department’s felony apprehension squad found Fernandez on Northwest Eighth Avenue and First Street. Police said they wrestled with him, and at one point he tried to get an officer’s gun. But they ultimately got Fernandez under control and arrested him.

During that scuffle, police said, Fernandez “suffered several small lacerations to his forehead and a bruised left eye. Rescue cleared the defendant on scene.”

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