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Prosecutors want Miami mom jailed again, citing Facebook posts about police officer who shot her son

Camellia Burris and Carol Marbin Miller, Miami Herald on

Published in News & Features

MIAMI — Calling her “an inherent danger to the community,” prosecutors on Friday asked a Miami judge to revoke the bond of Gamaly Hollis and return her to jail. The reason: The 51-year-old mother posted news articles on Facebook recounting her arrest on charges of stalking a Miami-Dade police officer who had shot and killed her mentally ill son.

Prosecutors say Hollis, who was released just a week ago after a year in jail, violated a judge’s order against using social media by sharing several stories about the June 2022 death of her son. Richard Hollis, who suffered from severe mental illness, was shot six times by Officer Jaime Pino — who had warned his mother a year earlier that he would do so if Richard Hollis brandished a weapon around police.

Hollis’ attorneys with the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Office argue no such restriction was imposed by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cristina Rivera Correa when she released Hollis on a $1,000 bond on April 19. They also say Hollis has a constitutional right to share published accounts of her son’s death online.

“She has every right, under the Constitution, to post a news story. It is her First Amendment right,” Natahly Soler, one of Gamaly Hollis’ attorneys, told the Miami Herald. “You can’t restrict a person’s First Amendment right to post something that is public.”

The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office did not respond to a request from the Miami Herald to comment about the office’s motion to revoke Hollis’ bail.

Richard Hollis was shot during a chaotic encounter on the evening of June, 15, 2022 — one of a number of police calls to the family’s Peppermill Apartments home in Kendale Lakes. Responding to a call about a disturbance from a neighbor, officers tried to convince him to open the door and leave the unit. When he failed to do so, Pino kicked in the apartment door, discharged his taser, and then shot Richard Hollis, who was wielding two kitchen knives.

 

Gamaly Hollis was within feet of her son when he was killed.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Miami-Dade state attorney’s office — both of which routinely investigate police-involved shootings — cleared Pino of any wrongdoing, concluding Hollis’ refusal to drop his knives left both his mother and police in harm’s way.

Though it is standard procedure for officers to be benched during a use-of-force investigation, Pino, instead, continued to patrol the same neighborhood where Hollis was killed. While the shooting was being reviewed, the department also designated him a field training officer, and assigned a junior officer to learn from him.

In the ensuing weeks, Gamaly Hollis visited the Miami-Dade Police’s Hammocks division several times. She said she was seeking the department’s report on her son’s death, but also wanted to speak with the man who shot him. On Aug. 22, 2022, Hollis confronted Pino at a crime scene, and accused him of murdering her son.

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