Florida | Video shows mom pushing autistic son into Miami canal, in what cops say was a first attempt

MIAMI — Days after Miami’s Patricia Ripley was charged with her autistic son’s murder, shocking surveillance video of her apparently pushing the child into a canal has emerged.

The video, obtained and aired by Univision’s national news network, shows Ripley walking 9-year-old Alejandro on the bank of a West Kendall canal, looking around, stroking his head — and then forcefully shoving him into the water.

Then, Ripley runs away off screen. About 20 seconds later, she returns accompanied by a bystander who saw the child in the murky water and rushed to rescue him.

Authorities say the shove was Ripley’s first, but thwarted, attempt to kill Alejandro Thursday evening. About an hour later, with no bystanders to rescue him, the boy was led into another canal, where he ultimately died, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle has told reporters.

The death of Alejandro, who suffered from severe autism and could not speak, has enraged the public — along with Ripley’s bogus report to Miami-Dade police that two black men kidnapped the boy after running her off the road that night.

The video, apparently taken from a nearby condo complex, will be key evidence against Ripley as she awaits trial for first-degree murder and attempted murder. She remains in a Miami-Dade jail.

The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office has ruled the death as drowning.

Investigators say they believe Ripley, 45, a married mother of two, had become overwhelmed in caring for the boy in recent months. Even before the pandemic, the boy had been receiving therapy at the family’s West Kendall home.

On Thursday night, Ripley called police to report that a light blue car had run her off the road, near a Home Depot. She claimed that one man in the car got out, demanded drugs at knifepoint, then took the boy, her cellphone and a tablet.

State authorities immediately issued an Amber Alert for the missing child, but investigators quickly grew suspicious because the story seemed unbelievable and Ripley gave shifting versions of what happened. On Friday morning, the boy’s body was found in a canal near the Miccosukee Golf & Country Club, at Southwest 138th Court and 62nd Street, about four miles from where the alleged abduction took place.

Miami-Dade homicide detectives immediately learned that Ripley, earlier in the evening, had been seen with the boy at another spot along a canal. The video footage showed her pushing the boy into the water — but the bystander rescued the boy. How she persuaded the bystander to not call 911 remained unclear, but the boy was apparently not hurt.

Sources say a security camera at a Home Depot near where the alleged abduction took place also showed Ripley sitting in her car — without Alejandro — for 20 minutes before she called police at 8:47 p.m. Thursday

During hours of interrogation, detectives confronted Ripley with the footage, and she admitted she’d made up the kidnapping story, according to an arrest report. She ultimately confessed to leading the boy to the canal where he ultimately died, and said “he’s going to be in a better place.”

The child’s death has led to a surge in crisis calls for parents dealing with severely autistic children.

The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office will likely seek an indictment for first-degree murder, which means Ripley will face the death penalty. Because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, however, grand juries have been suspended so the indictment is likely months away. The case has been assigned to Gail Levine, one of the office’s most seasoned homicide prosecutors.

The video would likely have been released eventually under Florida’s broad public records law.

Before the release of the video, Ripley’s family stood behind her.

“We love Alejandro and we don’t agree about whatever they said about my wife,” her husband, Aldo Ripley, told reporters after a court hearing on Saturday. “It’s not real.”

Source: Mimai Herald, David Ovalle, May 25, 2020

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Comments

Former Florida officer who raped, murdered 11-year-old set to be executed

An execution date has been set for a former Mascotte police officer who, in May 1987, assaulted and murdered an 11-year-old girl. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for James Aren Duckett on Friday. He’s scheduled to be executed on March 31. It’ll be the state’s 5th execution this year, following a record 19 executions in 2025. Duckett was convicted in the murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee about a year after her death. According to officials, Duckett took the 11-year-old to a lake, where he sexually battered, strangled and drowned her.

‘Come on with it’: Arkansas inmate asks to hasten execution

A Faulkner County judge has scheduled an August hearing to determine whether a death row inmate can bypass his attorney’s advice, drop his remaining appeals, and hasten his execution. Scotty Ray Gardner, 65, is facing the death penalty for the 2016 killing of his girlfriend, Susan Heather Stubbs, in Conway. In letters sent to Circuit Judge Chuck Clawson and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Gardner said he wants to end his legal battles, writing that he is tired of prison life and skeptical he will receive a fair hearing. “It’s simple,” Gardner wrote in a September letter. “Come on with it.”

Florida executes Melvin Trotter

The execution of Melvin Trotter for the murder of 70-year-old Virgie Langford in 1986 comes as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor questions Florida's 'deeply troubling' lethal injection record. Florida has executed its second inmate of the year even as a Supreme Court justice questioned the state's “deeply troubling" record on lethal injections and how it "shrouds its executions in secrecy." Melvin Trotter, 65, was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, Feb. 24, for the 1986 murder of 70-year-old Virgie Langford, a mother of 4 who was on the verge of retirement when she was stabbed to death in the corner grocery store that she owned for five decades. Trotter was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. ET.

Man convicted in 1986 murder set to become Florida's second execution of 2026

STARKE, Fla. (DPN) — A man convicted of stabbing and strangling a grocery store owner during a robbery nearly 40 years ago is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening, becoming the second person executed in Florida this year. Melvin Trotter, 65, is set to receive a three-drug lethal injection beginning at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. Trotter was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1986 killing of Virgie Langford, 70, who owned Langford’s Grocery Store in Palmetto, in southwest Florida's Manatee County.

India | POCSO Court awards death penalty to UP couple for sexual exploitation of 33 children

A special court in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda on Friday sentenced a former Junior Engineer (JE) of the Irrigation Department and his wife to death for the sexual exploitation of 33 minor boys — some as young as three — over a decade, officials said. The POCSO court termed the crimes as “rarest of rare” and held Ram Bhawan and his wife Durgawati guilty of systematically abusing children between 2010 and 2020 and producing child sexual abuse material. Convicting the duo under provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the court sentenced them to death for offences including aggravated penetrative sexual assault, using a child for pornographic purposes, storage of pornographic material involving children, and abetment and criminal conspiracy, they said.

North Carolina | DA won't seek death penalty against woman accused of poisoning family

HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. (DPN) — Prosecutors will not seek the death penalty against a Western North Carolina entrepreneur accused of poisoning her family during a Thanksgiving dinner and killing a man nearly two decades ago. During a mandatory Rule 24 hearing Thursday in Henderson County Superior Court, Assistant District Attorney John Douglas Mundy announced that the state will proceed with the case against Gudrun Linda Jean Casper-Leinenkugel, 52, as a non-capital matter. The decision removes the possibility of an execution, meaning the maximum penalty Casper-Leinenkugel now faces is life in prison without parole.

Twenty Years Since the Last Scheduled Execution in California and a Focus on the Participation of Physicians in Executions

February 21, 2006, a California court’s decision effectively halted the planned execution of Michael Angelo Morales, marking the start of California’s 20-year moratorium on execution scheduling and throwing into the spotlight the tension between physician participation in executions and their pledge to show “ the utmost respect for life .” " The events surrounding Morales’s impending fate brought to the surface the long-running schism between law and medicine, raising the question of whether any beneficial connection between the professions ever existed in the execution context. History shows it seldom did. Decades of botched executions prove it. " — Professor Deborah Denno, The Lethal Injection Quandary: How Medicine Has Dismantled the Death Penalty

Oklahoma Ends Indefinite Death Row Solitary Confinement

Every year, thousands of prisoners in the U.S. are placed in solitary confinement, where they endure isolation, abuse, and mental suffering . This practice might soon become rarer for some inmates in Oklahoma, thanks to the efforts of activists in the state. Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Oklahoma announced that the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester had ended the practice of indefinite solitary confinement for "the vast majority" of death row prisoners.

Chinese courts conclude trials of 2 criminal gangs from northern Myanmar, 16 sentenced to death

Chinese courts have concluded the trials of 2 major criminal groups based in northern Myanmar involved in telecom and online fraud, the Supreme People's Court (SPC) said Thursday. At a press conference held by the SPC, it was revealed that by the end of 2025, courts across the country had concluded first-instance trials of over 27,000 cases related to telecom fraud operations in northern Myanmar, with more than 41,000 returned suspects sentenced. Notably, among the trials of the so-called "4 major families" criminal gangs -- which had drawn widespread domestic and international attention -- those of the Ming and Bai groups have completed all judicial proceedings.

Florida | Governor DeSantis signs death warrant in 2008 murder case

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a death warrant for Michael L. King, setting an execution date of March 17, 2026, at 6 p.m. King was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2008 kidnapping, sexual battery and murder of Denise Amber Lee, a 21-year-old North Port mother. On January 17, 2008, Michael Lee King abducted 21-year-old Denise Amber Lee from her North Port home by forcing her into his green Chevrolet Camaro. He drove her around while she was bound, including to his cousin's house to borrow tools like a shovel. King took her to his home, where he sexually battered her, then placed her in the backseat of his car. Later that evening, he drove to a remote area, shot her in the face, and buried her nude body in a shallow grave. Her remains were discovered two days later. During the crime, multiple 9-1-1 calls were made, but communication breakdowns between emergency dispatch centers delayed the response. The case drew national attention and prompted w...

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog