Immunity hearing scheduled
A judge is expected to consider next month whether to dismiss the murder case against Lamont Collins under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. Collins faces a second-degree murder charge in the death of Adolf Bruce, a restaurant employee fatally stabbed aboard a City of Miami trolley in February 2025. Collins is representing himself, and NBC 6 South Florida reported that the judge has allowed him to review evidence before the hearing, which will determine whether the case ends before trial or proceeds.
NBC 6 South Florida reported that Collins recently watched surveillance footage and took notes as the video was reviewed in court. The station said the footage includes the stabbing and its aftermath. Those details are attributed to the station rather than presented as independent reporting.
Competing accounts of the encounter
Collins says Bruce attacked him first and that he drew a fishing knife because he feared serious bodily harm, NBC 6 South Florida reported. Prosecutors dispute that account and maintain that Collins was the aggressor. After the arrest, Miami police spokesman Mike Vega also rejected the self-defense explanation, saying the stabbing resulted from anger rather than an effort to protect himself, according to CBS News.
The arrest account described by CBS News and Local 10 News says the trolley driver stopped in the roadway and tried to calm the dispute. Police records say the confrontation resumed, with Bruce raising his hands and moving toward the back of the trolley while Collins advanced and stabbed him repeatedly. After Bruce fell, the report says, Collins stabbed him again before leaving through the open doors. What happened immediately before the stabbing remains central to Collins’s immunity claim.
Trolley safety rules
According to the City of Miami, trolley routes have published operating hours, with limited service on certain observed holidays. The city’s passenger rules prohibit fighting, throwing, pushing, rough behavior, shouting and vulgar language aboard the vehicles; the cited trolley information does not specify how individual rider incidents are documented.
What the law could decide
Florida Statute § 776.032 provides immunity from criminal prosecution for qualifying uses of force. Legal explanations cited in the article state that, after a defendant makes a prima facie showing of justified self-defense at a pretrial hearing, the prosecution must overcome the claim with clear and convincing evidence. The law-firm summaries from El-Naffy Law and Pumphrey Law describe the hearing as a judge’s pretrial decision on whether the case can continue.
If the judge denies immunity, Collins could still present self-defense at trial, where prosecutors would have to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, according to the same legal summaries. If immunity is granted, the murder case would be dismissed.
The underlying case
The stabbing occurred shortly before 3 p.m. on Feb. 4, 2025, near Biscayne Boulevard and Northeast 29th Street in Miami’s Edgewater neighborhood, CBS News reported. Bruce, 49, was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he died. Collins, who was 46 at the time of his arrest, was charged with second-degree murder, according to CBS News and Local 10 News.
Bruce worked at Amara at Paraiso, where colleagues remembered him as a valued employee and said he used the city trolley to commute, Local 10 News reported. The case will now turn on the surveillance evidence, the arrest-record account and the competing descriptions of who initiated the violence.
