A woman has been arrested and charged with attempted murder in Hialeah, Florida, after a family dispute escalated into a shooting that left her brother wounded, authorities say. The suspect, 39-year-old Viviana Paneca, became involved in a heated altercation with her sibling over a refusal to let her stay at his home following a weekend family barbecue. The victim's wife, upon hearing the argument over the phone, was reportedly told by Paneca to "not worry about it" and that Paneca would "not hesitate to shoot the victim if she had to," according to details shared by Local 10 News.
After the initial phone call confrontation, the victim received another call from their mother informing him that Jorge Luis Pelegrin, 47, later named as a co-defendant, was fighting with Paneca at their mother's apartment complex; upon the victim's return to address the issue, a doorbell camera captured the subsequent chaos as Pelegrin is heard to say, "Let me get that gun bro, let me get that gun bro" as the victim chased him, police said after reviewing the video, the situation devolved quickly with Paneca facing her brother in the parking lot brandishing a firearm. A statement obtained by Local 10 News reports captures Paneca aggressively instructing her brother to "Get the f--- out of here," before firing a shot into the ground even as the victim, in a seeming challenge, is heard saying, "Shoot me, shoot me."
The incident took a turn for the worst when Pelegrin urged Paneca to "Shoot him in the head," after which she shot her brother in the thigh as he approached her; the victim and a witness hastily left the scene in an SUV but were intercepted by police responding to a reported shooting, per the arrest report. In a separate report by VTN Modas, Paneca initially eluded arrest by fleeing into an alleyway but was eventually located by police alongside Pelegrin, both of whom were arrested and taken into custody.
Following the incident, the arrest report states that the victim's wife reached out to Paneca to inquire about her husband's whereabouts and during the call, when impliedly accused of the shooting, Paneca confessed saying, "Yeah," then urged her to claim ignorance about the conversation and the shooting if she ever had love for her, according to VTN Modas. In the aftermath, Paneca was held without bond at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on an attempted murder charge, and Pelegrin, also at TGK, was held on a bond set at $2,500, charged with being an accessory after the fact to the crime.
