Troubled Coral Gables High student Andy Rodriguez packed a knife to school not because a classmate had threatened him but because the other teen looked at him with a ``bad face.''
So when Rodriguez and Juan Carlos Rivera, 17, bumped elbows in the school hallway Sept. 15, fists flew and Rodriguez fatally stabbed Rivera with a box cutter, the suspect told Miami-Dade detectives.
``I took it out of my pocket, and I got him like that, from the side,'' Rodriguez, 17, said in a video-taped statement, adding, ``Here in the side, and the other one, I think -- I don't know -- maybe around the back.''
Prosecutors released the statement on Monday, along with surveillance footage, police and autopsy reports and witness interview transcripts, nearly two months after the stabbing forced a lock-down at the school.
The evidence reveals a feud of unspoken machismo -- tension seemingly built up around a girl -- but without a singular reason for the bad blood. This much is clear: Rodriguez and Rivera barely knew each other.
Rodriguez's attorney, Alexander J. Michaels, says his client was forced to strike.
``I don't like to talk strategy in the media, but I believe we have a solid self-defense claim,'' Michaels said.
Prosecutors disagree. Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle said Monday: ``You can never bring a weapon to school and hope to be acting within the law. Any weapon brought to a school is an express ticket to disaster.''
In his interview with police, Rodriguez told Detective Thomas Romagni that Rivera had never threatened him with a weapon.
Trouble had brewed in Rodriguez's past. Miami police records showed officers had responded to his home nine times since February, including to a report of ``a large family fight with knives.''
Rodriguez had no previous criminal history, but at Gables High he had been suspended seven times before the stabbing, records show. Three of those suspensions were for fighting. Miami-Dade Schools has a zero-tolerance policy for weapons; students are required to sign a code-of-conduct form acknowledging the policy, though it is unclear if Rodriguez did.
A recent arrival from Cuba, Rivera lived in the same Miami apartment complex as Rodriguez's girlfriend, Daimilsis Salgado, 17. Their families knew each other. Her mother had asked Daimilsis to give Rivera a lift to school.
Daimilsis told police she only gave him a few rides ``to be nice.''
Rodriguez claimed to police it never bothered him. But his pal, Mario Nuñez, 16, told police that Rodriguez confided to him ``that he had told her not give Juan Carlos any more rides.''
Shortly before the stabbing, Rodriguez split with Daimilsis, Mario told police, after she refused to give him her Myspace.com password. But they reconciled.
``It's when -- when I got back with my girlfriend that he started looking at me funny,'' Rodriguez said of Rivera. ``I want to clarify the issue here that I never got in any fights over my girlfriend . . . I never even told her that he was looking at me funny.''
Three or four days before the slaying, Rodriguez claimed, he found a knife while walking home from his job selling T-shirts at the Flagler Dog Track flea market. He kept it ``in case he attacked me first, like he did,'' Rodriguez said.
The day before the stabbing, Rodriguez claimed, Rivera bumped into him at lunchtime. ``Be careful,'' Rodriguez said he told Rivera, according to his statement.
His friend, Mario, provided a more detailed version: ``Juan Carlos began to stare at him, spit on the floor and grabbed his private parts. Andy didn't pay it any mind and kept walking.''
The knife was still in Rodriguez's pocket the next day when Rivera and Rodriguez bumped into each other at about 9 a.m. Who threw the first punch is still unclear.
Rodriguez told police: `I wasn't sure if he was going to attack me, but then I looked back and I saw him charging at me. I took several steps back and I put my feet firm on the ground, and then he came at me and I went at him and we went at it.''
One pal of Rodriguez's tried breaking up the fight until he saw the knife.
One girl heard the friend yell: ``Don't do it! You're going to get in trouble. You're going to ruin your life.''
Another witness saw Rodriguez slam Rivera to the floor. Rodriguez admitted to stabbing Rivera as they grappled on the ground.
Homicide detectives know Rivera was stabbed five times -- three in the front torso, two in the back. The fatal blow pierced his heart, the autopsy showed.
After he stabbed Rivera, Rodriguez told police, the wounded teen ``attacked me with a pen.'' No witnesses, however, ever told police that Rivera wielded a pen.
Blood stained the inside hallway wall after the fight. Security video showed that the fight then spilled outside.
After stabbing Rivera, Rodriguez ran back into the hallway, dodging students, peeling off his red shirt. A schools officer caught him a few blocks away.
Outside, Rivera stood, then crumpled to the ground. ``He was shaking and he started coughing,'' the girl said.
Rivera died on the concrete.
