A Homestead Cop Fatally Shot a Mentally Ill Man. She Won't Face Charges.

"Daniel was murdered by the Homestead Police Department in his home on October 22, 2023," reads an online obituary for Daniel Kempf.

A separate memorial page honoring Kempf's life describes the 24-year-old as an "intelligent, loving, and kind young man [who] touched thousands of people with his charismatic nature and sense of humor." He loved Taco Bell, anime, playing the guitar, composing music, and freehand drawing.

Kempf, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, was in the throes of a mental-health crisis when Homestead Police officers arrived at his grandmother's home on that October day in 2023. His family had summoned help. Instead, he wound up dead.

According to a Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office close-out memo, Kempf was reported missing after he left a suicide note weeks prior while staying at a friend's house. He returned home on October 20 and got into a fight with his mother, Yaneitsy Rosete, and took her cell phone. She left the house to let him cool off for a few days, the close-out memo states.

At 8 a.m. on Sunday, October 22, Yaneitsy Rosete and her mother, Caridad Rosete, returned to the home and checked on Kempf in his bedroom, where they noticed a knife on his pillow. In light of the suicide note and a more recent threat to harm himself, the women agreed they should get Kempf to a facility for an evaluation. Yaneitsy Rosete contacted the Miami-Dade Police Department detective who'd handled the missing-person investigation. Homestead Police Department officers arrived at the home around 4:45 p.m. that afternoon. Half an hour later, Kempf was dead.

Late last year, Miami prosecutors opted not to press charges against the officer who shot Kempf, finding the deadly force was justified. A Homestead Police Department investigation into the officer-involved shooting is ongoing.

New Times obtained body-cam footage of the incident and shared it with
two criminology experts who say that based on what they can see, they do not believe Kempf was an overt threat to the officers. If anything, they say, he was more of a threat to himself.

In a pending federal wrongful-death lawsuit filed against the City of Homestead in March 2024, Yaneitsy Rosete claims she believed calling the police would provide the "necessary assistance" amid her son's mental-health crisis.

The Kempf shooting is one of a handful of incidents in which people in Miami-Dade County have died in custody or at the hands of police while in mental distress. Kempf's mother and older brother, Thomas Kempf, created the Daniel Kempf Foundation to help people struggling with their mental health get the treatment they need.

"Mental health shouldn't equal a death sentence," the family's attorney, Robert Pelier, tells New Times.

Shoot, Shoot, Shoot!

Three officers involved in the shooting, Schelisa Gilpin-Braithwaite, Joseph Rivera, and Giovanni Nazario, were equipped with body-worn cameras. The description below is drawn from viewings of footage from the three separate body cams.

Upon arriving on the scene, Nazario can be seen and heard speaking in Spanish with Kempf's grandmother to learn about her grandson's situation, then relaying the information to his fellow officers.

"So we are gonna, I guess, head over there to try and make contact with him," Nazario says. "She's saying that yesterday is when he made the threats. Today he hasn't made any threats; she just saw the knife under his pillow."

The officers decide to head toward the house to see if Kempf will come out and speak with them. They learn that Kempf has been diagnosed as schizophrenic and had previously been "Baker Acted" — an involuntary hold for up to 72 hours for a mental-health evaluation.
Before trying to make contact with Kempf, Gilpin-Braithwaite assigns herself to act as the "lethal" officer with a firearm, designating Rivera as the "less lethal" officer, who will carry a Taser. They decide to attempt to get Kempf out of the home by telling him they want to check on him so they can remove his name from the missing-persons list.

Nearly 30 minutes into the body cam footage, the group gets into position. With a Taser in his right hand, Nazario unlocks the front door, shouting, "Daniel, Daniel, Homestead Police! Hey Daniel, come here. I want to talk to you. You come out as a missing, man."

There is no response. He continues shouting into the home, to no avail.

"Daniel, are you okay?" Nazario yells. "I need to know if you're okay. Bang on the door for me."

Minutes later, the officers enter the home. Despite their plan for only one lethal officer, "They each had their service firearms drawn while they conducted the search of the residence, for officer safety," according to the close-out memo. They proceed room by room, looking for Kempf. Rummaging through one of the two bedrooms in the single-story home, they flip over a mattress to see if he's hiding underneath. They eventually conclude he must be hiding inside the other bedroom.

"Daniel, Homestead police. Daniel," Nazario says. "Hey, I just want to get you out of the system. Come on outside and talk to me, man. Daniel, come talk to me, buddy. Hey, you are not in any trouble, man. I just want to talk to you."

A fourth officer, Lieutenant Jorge Cruz, who joins the officers inside the home as they search for Kempf, issues more commands, which Kempf ignores.

"Daniel, hey let me know you're okay buddy," Nazario persists. "Can you knock on the door for me? Daniel, I am here to help you, man. I am concerned about you, man. Everybody is concerned about you — your mom and grandma. They just want to get you help."

Still no response. As Rivera aims his taser and others point their guns, the officers open the door. Gilpin-Braithwaite instructs Kempf to come out with his hands up.

Six minutes pass. Then Gilpin-Braithwaite leads the way into the bedroom, where they discover Kempf in the bathroom, standing with a towel around his waist and a knife pointed at his chest. Rivera positions himself in a closet near the bathroom.
"Hey, let me see your hands!" Gilpin-Braithwaite shouts, with her gun pointed at the 24-year-old. "Let me see your hands!"
Kempf holds the knife against his chest, screaming, "Shoot, shoot, shoot!" Navarro shouts that the subject is holding the knife.Gilpin-Braithwaite screams, "Don't fucking do it! Don't do it, Daniel." As Kempf walks out of the bathroom holding his towel around his waist and the knife still pointed at his chest, Rivera tases him. Simultaneously, Gilpin-Braithwaite fires her gun. It's unclear whether the shot hit him. Kempf clenches up, still trying to say, "Shoot, shoot, shoot."

"He's not dropping it, he's not dropping it," Gilpin-Braithwaite says, referring to the knife. Nazario instructs Rivera to "give [Kempf] another one" before Rivera tases him again.

"Don't do it, Daniel," Gilpin-Braithwaite yells as she fires a second shot. "He's not dropping it, he's not dropping it!"
Kempf's body seizes up, then drops to the bathroom floor, motionless.

"Shots fired, shots fired!" Gilpin-Braithwaite screams. Body cam footage captures her telling the officers, "He didn't drop it." Breathing heavily, she approaches Kempf, who is who is facedown in the bathroom, his back covered in blood.

"Fuck," she says.Gilpin-Braithwaite, walks out of the room looking shaken. A fellow officer hugs her, assuring her it's okay.

According to to the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's report, an autopsy the following day revealed that Kempf died from a gunshot wound to the head.

Excessive Use of Force?

The two criminologists who viewed the body-cam footage say Kempf appeared not to pose an imminent or overt threat to the officers that would warrant the use of lethal force.

"There's a bit of an irony that I'm trying to prevent you from stabbing yourself, so I shoot you instead," Dennis Kenney, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice tells New Times. "That always seems a little bit odd."

Kenney, a former Florida police officer with over 35 years of experience in criminal justice, notes that the footage did not show Kempf lunge at the officers or attempt to stab anyone.

Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, credits the officers for planning and discussing how to handle the situation. But he, too, questions why Gilpin-Braithwaite opted for lethal force instead of waiting for the Taser to work.

"The question I want to know is: 'What was the imminent threat he posed when they shot him?'" Alpert says. "I thought the Taser, the less-lethal force, was absolutely reasonable. He had a knife. He was a threat — more of a threat to himself."

Alpert notes out that the prosecutors' close-out memo includes mention that officer Gilpin-Braithwaite fired her firearm simultaneously with the officer who fired his Taser.

"Why wouldn't you give the Taser an opportunity to work?" he asks rhetorically. "It looked like it worked. But they also said he was only five feet away when he shot him with a Taser, so he may not have gotten enough distance between the prongs. Even so, it looked like he didn't move [after being tased]. I mean, it looked like he was frozen."

Alpert says it's customary police practice not to resort to deadly force unless there is an imminent threat to someone.

"He hasn't shown any aggression towards them, and he comes out, and he's not dropping his knife. Well, I don't think you can shoot him just because he's not dropping it, not following orders," he adds. And based on the video, it also may have been difficult for Kempf to drop the knife if his muscles had frozen up from the Taser. "It is possible that his physical reaction was to clench up," Alpert says.

What About Crisis Intervention?

Kenney believes the situation may have had a different outcome if a crisis-intervention team had responded to the call to help de-escalate. He says it's ineffective for a group of officers to yell commands and point their weapons at a man in the middle of a mental-health crisis.

"He came out with a knife and they're yelling at him, 'Stop. Don't. Put it down,'" Kenney, the criminologist, notes. "People in mental crisis have a difficult time processing those kinds of commands, and they generally do nothing."

On that score, the 11th Judicial Circuit Criminal Mental Health Project does offer 40 hours of free Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Training to police officers in Miami-Dade County, aiming to "to bridge the gap between law enforcement and behavioral health."

"Through community partnerships and collaboration, this alliance promotes systems transformation that improves safety, reduces inappropriate incarceration, and redirects individuals with mental illness and substance use disorders from the criminal justice system to the health care system, when appropriate," the course description reads.

Captain Fernando Morales, the public information officer for the Homestead Police Department, says officers have availed themselves of the training for many years.

"Currently, we have a standing commitment to send at least two officers per 40-hour session, which is roughly every month, with the exception being during the summer months when they are primarily training school board officers," Morales tells New Times.

Nationwise, many cities have experimented with dispatching mental-health professionals to 911 calls for people in distress. For instance, the Philadelphia Police Department has a "co-responder program," called the Crisis Intervention Response Team, which assigns mental-health professionals to team up with cops on some 911 calls. The Denver Police Department also developed a similar co-responder program.

Conflicting Narratives

Months after her son's death, Yaneitsy Rosete sued the City of Homestead in federal court, alleging that the use of lethal force was unnecessary because Kempf had "not done anything to threaten or provoke" the officers. (The family had previously filed a lawsuit in Miami-Dade Circuit Court to force the department to release the body cam footage.)

Leading up to the shooting, Kempf "had shown signs of depression, anxiety, and other symptoms associated with a mental and emotional health crisis," the lawsuit states. The family believed that calling the police would result in Kempf being transported to a mental-health facility for treatment.

"When the family called to request this assistance, they provided the details of [Kempf's] mental health state and advised that based on their observations and interaction with [Kempf], there had been no threat of violence or danger posed by [Kempf]," the complaint reads.

The suit contends that the officers were aware of Kempf's mental-health struggles and that he might have been holding a butter knife. (The close-out memo describes the item as a "steak knife with a serrated metal blade.")

"At the time during this encounter, Daniel was approximately 12 to 14 feet away from all of the officers and made no pronouncements or movements to approach, lunge, or otherwise threaten any of the officers," the complaint alleges. (The close-out memo states Officer Rivera was "only approximately five feet away from Kempf" when he deployed his Taser.)

The lawsuit asserts that Gilpin-Braithwaite did not need to fire her weapon, considering he had already been tased.

In the close-out memo, Assistant State Attorney Ayana Duncan wrote that "[t]he actions of Kempf in refusing to show his hands or to follow police commands to drop the knife, followed by his continued advancement toward officer Rivera while still armed with the knife[,] could constitute an assault of a law enforcement officer."

"[Kempf] began the use of lethal force," Duncan added, when he exited the bathroom with a knife and walked toward the officers, shouting.

"There was not enough space for the officer to maneuver quickly to retreat, in the event that Kempf lunged at or continued to advance towards the officer, while armed with the knife," Duncan wrote.

Robert Pelier, the family's attorney, maintains that at no point in the video footage does Kempf lunge at the officers. He says the Taser incapacitated the 24-year-old, to the point where he was not in control of his skeletal system. "A plain view of the video does not support what these cops are saying," Pelier tells New Times.

In his statement to Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) following the shooting, Rivera said he was "in fear of his life" when Kempf came out of the bathroom with a knife. "[Rivera] stated, 'I had nowhere to go,' the memo reads. "I was stuck in the closet."

Nazario similarly told FDLE investigators that he considered Kempf's actions to be aggressive and "that he had a well-founded fear that Kempf was a threat to himself and others."

According to a 2020 Miami Herald report, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle had never charged an officer for an on-duty fatal shooting since she was first appointed to the office to replace Janet Reno in 1993. State Attorney’s Office spokesperson Ed Griffith confirms to New Times that there have not been any new prosecutions in the intervening five years.

"It's always justified, and it's unfortunate," attorney Pelier says. "It seems like a rubber stamp, and so my intent is to bring justice to the family."