He Called It Suicide. By 2:14 AM, Two Partners Were Dead | Part 1
Thanksgiving weekend, 1988. Only five officers were assigned to cover an entire Miami-Dade, Florida district that night.
NOTICE: This video contains an error in the opening voiceover at 00:36 - The year should be 1988, not 1983. Additionally, at 00:19 - Steve Anderson was the first to arrive on scene, not Frank Rodriguez.
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Thanksgiving weekend, 1988. Only five officers were assigned to cover an entire Miami-Dade, Florida district that night. Before his first call, Rick Rossman told his sergeant it felt like suicide going out that short-staffed. By 2:14 AM that morning, two of his partners were dead.
Richie Boles and David Strzalkowski responded to a disturbance call - the same call Rick couldn't take because he had a robbery suspect in his back seat. The man waiting for them was Charlie Street: a violent ex-con whose criminal history never surfaced in a records check because the system was down. Street overpowered both officers and shot them multiple times with their own weapons.
Rick arrived on scene to find both partners lying in the road. He drove to a highway overpass and waited alone - betting he could cut Street off before he reached I-95. Broward County caught him first. When Rick arrived to make the identification, Street looked at him and smiled. Rick says he doesn't remember much of what happened next.
Part 1 covers that entire Thanksgiving night shift - the systemic failures, the murders, and the long weight that followed. Part 2 picks up with a third line-of-duty death Rick was first on scene for: the murder of Officer Joey Martin.
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## Timestamps
0:00 — Cold open: Richie's last words on radio
0:37 — Miami-Dade 1988: "South Florida was coming apart"
2:51 — Five officers, one district, Thanksgiving night
5:46 — Charlie Street: the violent ex-con the system missed
7:25 — Dead silence: the last transmission from Richie Boles
8:28 — Arriving on scene: both officers lying in the road
11:40 — How they died: killed with their own guns
14:24 — The pursuit: Rick waits alone at the Corbett overpass
17:20 — Face to face: "He looked at me and smiled"
18:05 — Funerals, trauma, and "I put it in a little box"
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