By David Ovalle
The Miami Herald
MIAMI-DADE, Fla. — As Miami-Dade jailers booked inmate Santos Mejia, they made a disturbing discovery: a loaded .22 caliber handgun hidden inside his right shoe.
The gun was confiscated, unloaded and returned to Miami officers.
The Miami Police Department is reviewing why longtime officer Emilio Valenzuela failed to find the gun before leaving the handcuffed Mejia, 21, with jailers in the rear lobby of Miami-Dade County Jail on Saturday.
Mejia is charged with aggravated assault with a firearm, aggravated battery with a firearm and introducing a contraband article into jail.
“I ordered him to move away from the shoe ... ,” Corrections Officer Jeffrey Hill wrote in a report. Another officer fished the gun out of Mejia’s sneaker.
Officers put Mejia in a cell and stripped him, the report says. “There was nothing else found on the inmate,” Hill wrote. “No force used.”
His shoe size was unavailable, said Janelle Hall, a jail spokeswoman. The gun is about five inches front to back — an uncomfortable fit.
Finding a loaded gun on an inmate is rare. The jail calls it a “major incident” and will conduct its own review.
“Given the recent events, I’m very thankful this was a very good outcome and no one was hurt,” Corrections Director Tim Ryan said Monday. He was referring to Thursday’s shooting incident in Naranja in which one Miami-Dade police officer was killed and three others were injured.
Mejia is a five-foot-four, pony-tailed Honduran laborer with no previous arrests in Florida.
He was arrested by Miami’s homicide bureau and charged with shooting a man in the leg in Allapattah on Sept. 8.
According to police reports, Mejia asked Juan Carlos Flores, 34, and his brother if he “had a problem with him.” Then, he shot “several rounds,” hitting Flores in the right leg.
Flores said he didn’t know Mejia. The case was unsolved until Friday night, when Flores spotted the suspected shooter at the neighborhood’s Jaragua bar, 1298 NW 29th Ave., and called the police.
According to Miami police policy: “Officers must search prisoners prior to placing a prisoner in a police vehicle. It cannot be assumed that a prisoner is free of weapons or contraband -- even if previously searched.
“The responsibility for the search is incumbent on the officer who places the prisoners in the police vehicle.”
Mejia was taken to jail by Officer Valenzuela, 44, an afternoon shift officer who joined the department in October 1989.
Valenzuela’s sergeant will investigate the incident, said Miami Lt. Bill Schwartz, a police spokesman. He called the lapse a “training issue.”
“It’s very rare that officers, up until now, would ask a prisoner to take off his shoes,” Schwartz said. “We live and learn and as a result, you’ll be seeing that done routinely.”
Copyright 2007 Miami Herald