Yesterday, in Bouayad v. Normandy Insurance Company, the Florida Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in a case whose facts could have come straight out of a Law & Order TV episode.
Here’s the background as stated by the Court:
While wrapping up his workday as the general manager of a car rental business located on the premises of a hotel near Orlando International Airport, [Mohammed] Bouayad was shot numerous times at close range by an assailant who emerged from a dimly lit area and who did not rob Bouayad. The unsolved crime, captured by a surveillance camera, took place around midnight on June 28, 2019, while Bouayad walked under a covered, outdoor walkway from the hotel atrium (where his company’s kiosk desk was located) to an outside office near the pool. At the end of each shift, Bouayad carried rental agreements and cash (if any) from the kiosk to that office. On the night in question, he worked the late shift because he was training new hires after having recently fired three employees (two for theft, one for drug use). Bouayad otherwise would not have been working that shift.
Though gravely injured by the assailant, Bouayad made his way back to the hotel atrium, where he collapsed and expressed his belief that he had been shot by “Robert”—a reference to Robert Aponte, who, one day earlier, had threatened to kill Bouayad’s son. But Aponte was never charged in connection with the shooting of Bouayad. In fact, although “[t]he shooter’s face was not clearly visible on the video,” . . . witnesses who knew Aponte—including Bouayad’s son—opined that Aponte was not the assailant seen on the video.
