CORAL GABLES, FLA. (WSVN) - Police have arrested a homeless man accused of brutally murdering a University of Miami student in his off-campus apartment.
Miami-Dade Police officers took 28-year-old Robert Wayne Gore into custody near a Shell gas station along U.S. 1 and Southwest 200th Street in Cutler Bay, Wednesday.
Gore is accused of stabbing 23-year-old architecture student Yasser Talal Ibrahim Abualfaraj at his apartment in the area of 6500 block of Santona Street, on Oct. 7.
The arrest came after he allegedly shoplifted earlier this week.
Friends of Abualfaraj said he was from Saudi Arabia and had been in his third year of the school’s architecture program.
Police said Gore is currently homeless.
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.”
Officers later caught up with Gore at the gas station, and by Wednesday night, he was being interviewed by MDPD Homicide Bureau investigators.
A man who recognized the suspect from surveillance video obtained exclusively by 7News said he was surprised about the allegations.
“To find out he’s out here for a murder, especially someone I went to [high] school with, is definitely a shock,” Jonathan Jaramillo said.
For clerks at the Cutler Bay gas station, Gore was a familiar face that frequented the area.
“He’s usually out here all the time,” a clerk said. “We usually help him whenever he asks for change.”
A look at Gore’s prior criminal history revealed he has had many run-ins with the law. 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.
The long list of charges he’s faced in the past include strong-armed robbery, loitering, disorderly intoxication and resisting an officer.
Police are still investigating what the motive behind the student’s murder may have been.
Gore has been charged with first-degree murder and armed burglary. He has been denied bond.
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