Steve Torruella Rodriguez, a 48-year-old man, died after a shooting on the morning of August 9, 2024, in the Lake Underhill area of Orlando, Florida. Deputies were called to the 7300 block of Lake Underhill Road around 9 a.m., where they found him suffering from a gunshot wound amid a rapidly forming crime scene near the Lake Underhill Plaza.
He was rushed from the scene to a hospital, but the injury proved fatal.
As word spread through the plaza and surrounding businesses, investigators moved quickly to lock down the area, interview witnesses, and piece together what had happened in the moments leading up to the gunfire.
By the end of the day, authorities had identified a suspect: Pablo Rafael Lantigua Cabral. Investigators said he was taken into custody and booked on a charge of second-degree murder with a firearm, signaling that detectives believed the shooting was not an accident or a split-second mistake, but an act serious enough to support a homicide charge at that level.
Officials offered few public details about what sparked the confrontation or how the victim and suspect may have been connected, emphasizing that the case remained under active investigation. Reports noted that others connected to the incident stayed at the scene as deputies worked, suggesting the encounter unfolded in a way that left law enforcement with immediate access to key people involved.
In the first court steps that followed, Cabral appeared before a judge and was ordered held without bond, with a pre-trial detention hearing scheduled for August 16, 2024. While the public record at the time focused on the arrest and initial hearing, the case left a stark narrative behind: a Friday morning in a busy Orlando corridor, a gunshot that ended a life, and an arrest made quickly—yet with many unanswered questions about motive still kept close by investigators.
