MIAMI (WSVN) - A South Florida homeless man accused of killing a University of Miami student appeared in court.
Twenty-eight-year-old Robert Wayne Gore was denied bond in court, Thursday.
Miami-Dade Police said Gore is the suspect they had been looking for in their investigation into the death of 23-year-old architecture student Yasser Talal Ibrahim Abualfaraj.
According to investigators, Gore fatally stabbed Abualfaraj inside his off-campus apartment.
He was taken into custody near a Shell gas station along U.S. 1 and Southwest 200th Street in Cutler Bay, Wednesday.
Police said Gore had been shoplifting.
Neighbors remembered Abualfaraj as a man who didn’t bother anybody.
“He was quiet,” neighbor Emma Deza said. “He was always smiling. He was a very nice man.”
Gino Lopez, a friend of Gore’s said he had just eaten lunch with him hours before police stormed his apartment, searching for Gore.
“It’s like my world split apart,” Lopez said. “‘Where’s Robert? Where’s Robert? Where is he?’ And I’m like, ‘He’s not here.’”
Lopez then did what he could to help police find Gore, unaware that he was accused of murder.
“I went with them, and we checked all the spots that Robert could be in,” Lopez said. “I had to help because this was so crazy.”
Lopez said Gore has been living on the streets ever since he was kicked out of his home at the age of 17. However, Lopez said Gore was never violent.
“He’s never done anything like this. I mean, all he’s ever done was stuff like what homeless people usually do, which is trespassing, shoplift and do whatever they can to survive,” Lopez said.
Lopez was trying to see things turn around for Gore.
“All the help I was trying to get him to just straighten his life just gone,” he said.
Gore faces charges of first-degree murder and armed burglary.
Copyright 2024 Sunbeam Television Corp. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.