By Jennifer Babson. jbabson@herald.com. Published Tuesday, August 15, 2000, in the Miami Herald.
KEY WEST -- Police have confirmed that a man found floating off the Florida Keys last week -- his body torn by sharks almost beyond recognition -- was indeed a Cuban migrant trying to flee by boat to Florida with his 20-year-old brother.
Juan Carlos Rodriguez-Bueno, 23, was identified by family members in Miami and Hialeah Monday morning.
The family called the Florida Marine Patrol after relatives in Cuba said they last saw the brothers Aug. 6.
The pair apparently had been planning the treacherous trip across the Florida Straits by boat.
"Apparently after [the family] heard there were some people missing in the water, they thought it might be their brothers, because they weren't at their house in Cuba and they had been talking about coming over,'' said Detective James Norman.
U.S. Coast Guard officers were unable to retrieve the body of the man's brother -- Alex Rodriguez-Bueno, 20 -- after a tiger shark dragged him underwater about 20 miles off Looe Key on Thursday.
A Monroe County detective showed a photograph of the recovered body to the stepbrother of the two men, but he could not make a positive identification.
The stepbrother showed the picture to his father, Carlos Rodriguez, 59, of Hialeah, who identified the badly decomposed man as his son.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald | 