What started as an on-again, off-again relationship in Hialeah has turned into a criminal case, with police saying a jilted ex spent months stalking his former girlfriend and then attacked her new boyfriend in a tense parking lot confrontation.
According to an arrest report, Steven Michael Gaviria is facing one count of aggravated stalking and one count of burglary with assault. Investigators say the trouble came to a head on Monday, June 15, when the couple pulled into their neighborhood and spotted a white Genesis sedan parked nearby. The car drove away, but police say it circled back, blocked them in and that is when Gaviria allegedly got out and started punching and scratching the current boyfriend.
The alleged ambush followed what authorities describe as months of stalking, including repeated appearances in the couple’s neighborhoods and a hidden tracking device found attached to the ex-girlfriend’s vehicle. Investigators say the small GPS-style gadget, discovered under her car, had been sending alerts to her phone whenever she got in. That device is now part of the evidence in the case, according to details in the arrest report, as reported by NBC 6 South Florida.
Florida law on trackers
Florida law does not have much patience for secret GPS gadgets on other people’s property. It is a crime to install or use a tracking device on someone else’s belongings without their consent, and in many situations that kind of spying can be charged as a felony.
The statute takes a broad view of what counts as a "tracking device" and carves out only a few exceptions, including for law enforcement, certain caregivers and tracking that is ordered by a court. Under Florida Statutes Section 934.425, unauthorized tracking can bring prison time, fines or both.
Trackers show up in other local probes
South Florida investigators have been seeing a lot more of these tiny trackers show up in stalking cases. Police reports across the region describe victims getting phone alerts or discovering coin-sized devices taped or magnetized to the underside of their cars.
Several recent arrests have leaned heavily on that digital breadcrumb trail, with detectives pointing to proximity alerts that linked suspects to victims and to specific locations. In one separate Hialeah investigation, officers said a man planted a tracker on a former partner’s vehicle, a case that underscored growing privacy and safety worries around these devices, as detailed by the Miami Herald.
In Gaviria’s case, Hialeah police say he was asked to return to the station, where, according to the arrest report, he confessed and was formally charged. As of the latest update, authorities have not released additional booking or court records to the public, per NBC 6 South Florida.
