A 25-year-old Dade City man has been sentenced to two concurrent terms of 50 years in state prison for shooting a Buchholz High School student at point-blank range during a botched robbery behind The Oaks Mall in Gainesville two years ago, leaving the 17-year-old permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Jose E. Galindo was convicted of attempted murder and robbery after a plot hatched by two teenagers — one of them his own younger brother — spiraled into gunfire when he volunteered to act as the gunman.
A Robbery Plan Overheard Through a Gaming Headset
According to the Alachua Chronicle, the Office of State Attorney Brian Kramer announced the sentencing, which came after a jury found Galindo guilty in July. Judge Denise Ferrero handed down the 50-year sentences in September, with Galindo also facing lifetime probation and a $2,099,900 restitution order payable to the victim. The victim, 17-year-old Ari Mordujovich, was shot in the upper chest at close range, and the bullet lodged in his spine as he tried to resist the robbery attempt.
The robbery played out in the parking area behind The Oaks Condominiums near the mall, where Galindo's co-defendants claimed to live in order to lure Mordujovich — a Buchholz classmate of one of the juveniles — into meeting them for what was supposed to be a transaction involving THC vape cartridges. Instead, the meeting turned into an ambush.
Texts Reveal Monthslong Planning and the Adult Who Joined In
Phone records recovered by Gainesville Police and detailed by the Alachua Chronicle showed the two teenagers, Bryan Galindo Vega and Yasin Kamel Al'olabi, had been plotting the robbery since August 2024 — more than a month before the shooting. Just two hours after Mordujovich was shot, Vega texted a contact a confession that needed no decoding: “Yo I rob da white boo bro it ain't go as plane bro my brother shot his a** in da back bro.”
Jose Galindo's path into the plot came through an online video game. During a January 2025 sworn proffer, Vega told investigators that Galindo overheard the two juveniles planning the robbery over their headset microphones while they played together on October 5, 2024, and offered to drive and serve as the shooter. At the time, Galindo was reportedly living with Vega in Gainesville, and he fled back to Pasco County after the shooting, where police arrested him the following February once his co-defendants identified him as the triggerman.
Post-Shooting Texts and a Lack of Remorse
Prosecutors, led by Assistant State Attorney Christopher Elsey, introduced text exchanges at the September sentencing hearing showing the defendants' demeanor in the aftermath. Vega messaged Galindo about community fear over the crime, adding “we're ghosts out here” along with ghost and laughing emojis, while Galindo instructed him to deny all knowledge of what happened.
Both juveniles, Vega and Al'olabi, later entered pleas of nolo contendere to attempted murder and robbery in 2025 as part of agreements to cooperate with prosecutors. Each was sentenced to 15 years in prison followed by 10 years of probation, and both were ordered to pay the same $2,099,900 in restitution that Galindo now also owes. Though they were juveniles at the time of the shooting, both were charged as adults.
Mandatory Minimums Under Florida's 10-20-Life Law
The 25-year mandatory floor within Galindo's sentence traces back to Florida Statute § 775.087, known as the state's “10-20-Life” law. As explained by The Brancato Law Firm, discharging a firearm during an enumerated violent felony that causes severe injury triggers a mandatory minimum of 25 years to life without early release gain time, stripping judges of discretion to go lower regardless of other circumstances.
The case also carried a civil dimension. Mordujovich's family filed a negligence lawsuit against The Oaks Condominiums over premises security, and that suit was settled out of court before the criminal sentencing took place, according to the same Mainstreet Daily News report.
A Mall Corridor With Recurring Safety Concerns
The Oaks Mall area has seen other gun incidents since the 2024 shooting. In February, Gainesville police and Alachua County deputies arrested a 19-year-old man accused of discharging a firearm inside a jewelry store at the mall during an argument, though no injuries were reported in that separate case, per Mainstreet Daily News.
The Galindo sentencing also lands in the same stretch of months as another major case tied to Buchholz High School. In March, a judge sentenced a 35-year-old man to two life prison terms for the 2010 home-invasion murder of 16-year-old Buchholz student Sebastian Ochsenius, a case Hoodline previously reported had gone unsolved for over a decade before DNA evidence led to a conviction.
