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Nov 8, 2009 12:27 am US/Eastern
3 Years Later: Pata Murder Remains Unsolved
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
Three years ago Saturday, a star University of Miami Hurricanes football player was gunned down and killed in a dark Kendall parking lot; police still have no suspects or motive for the murder of Bryan Pata.
Pata was in the parking lot of the Colony Apartment complex in Kendall. He had just exited his black Infiniti SUV when someone pointed a gun at the Miami defensive lineman's head, pulled the trigger and killed him.
Pata was only 22 years old.
On the final night of his life, Pata's car stereo was up; so anyone nearby the apartment complex could hear him coming.
His girlfriend, Jada Brody, was inside the apartment, two flights of stairs above the parking lot. According to Edwin Pierre-Pata, Bryan Pata's older brother, she said she heard the stereo, then a gunshot. (Some people told police they heard Pata fighting with another man. The family isn't sure what happened.) Brody ran downstairs, saw the 6-foot-4, 280-pound Pata lying near bushes at the bottom of the stairwell and chided him to stop joking around.
Then she saw the blood pouring from his head.
The family, the police, Pata's Hurricane teammates -- all of them would love to see closure. Someone out there, they all say, knows something, saw something, hid something. But the flow of information is down to a trickle, and none of it ultimately has been good enough for investigators to close the case.
A reward of $21,000 has been posted, but even that hasn't been enough to lure someone forward.
Detectives have been tight-lipped about what they know or don't know. Records about the case, from the incident report to Pata's autopsy, are either unavailable or heavily redacted because the case remains open.
The police still have Pata's clothes and cell phone from that night, citing them as evidence. The guns that Pata, who one day wished to be an FBI agent, kept under his bed in the apartment are evidence as well. He had permits for them. Pata's mother did get his wallet back eventually. It contained about $800.
Much of the family's internal speculation stems around a fight outside a Miami nightclub that summer, at a venue where Pata was working security.
According to Pierre-Pata, several people began brawling, and Pata intervened as a peacemaker. Soon, the family contends, Pata began getting phone calls from people he didn't know, and some were death threats.
Police officials, again citing that the case is open, have neither confirmed nor denied the claim.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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