On Thursday at the Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building in Miami, Judge Alberto Milian told Kadel Peidrahita that he was a cold-blooded murder and sentenced him to life in prison for killing 48 year-old elite bike racer Alex Palencia in 2019.

“This was a cold-blooded murder,” said Milian. “This is an outrageous abuse of the right to bear a firearm.”

Adding, “I clearly see you, the defendant, attempting to knock Alex Palencia off of his bicycle while riding a motorcycle. I clearly see an aggressive individual also using obscenities throughout,” he said. “I also see that individual achieved his objective destabilizing Alex Palencia on that bicycle.”

On 16 September, a jury found Piedrahita guilty of second-degree murder after he video recorded fatally shooting Palencia while the cyclist was participating in the weekly “Don Pan” group ride on Rickenbacker Causeway in Miami.

Piedrahita claimed the shooting was self-defense. The jury and judge saw it as cold-blooded murder.

Milian sentenced Piedrahita to life in prison after hearing statements from Palencia’s children, wife and brother. Palencia’s wife Iris Kennedy called life without him an “unbearable heaviness,” with “days where even getting out of bed feels impossible and troubled with feelings of emptiness and darkness that we never knew existed.”

Even in his 40s, Palencia competed as an elite Category 1 road racer against riders half his age, winning the Arkansas State Elite Criterium Championship in 2014.

Photo Credit: CourtTV, Alex Palencia

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