Suspect's (Padilla's) years in South Florida were troubled

The American gang kid who now calls himself Abdullah al Muhajir, accused of plotting radioactive terrorism against his country, lived in South Florida from 1990 to 1998. He landed in the Broward County Jail. He converted to Islam here.

He also liked fast cars. He had his real name, Jose, tattooed on his right arm. He possessed a silver .38-caliber revolver and a hair-trigger temper.

''He started to go for his gun when I went to arrest him,'' said Sunrise police Lt. Charles Vitale, who vividly recalled a 1991 road rage incident. ``I'm not surprised to hear he got in more trouble. He was the type of person you would expect that from.''

Said Victor Lento, the other driver in that incident: ``Now you tell me he's a terrorist, and I realize how close I came to dying.''

This latest alleged symbol of terror was known locally as Jose Padilla, the name he was given at birth in Brooklyn. But he seemed to cultivate mystery.

Some police records described him as Hispanic, others as white non-Hispanic. On his marriage license, he described himself as African American, and he used only one name: Ibrahim. He is 31.

Acquaintances said his family came from or at least lived for a time in Puerto Rico.

The woman believed to be his mother, Estela Ortega Lebron, now lives in Plantation. Monday night, a note on her door read: ''Please leave this family in peace.'' It referred questions to a New York law firm.

When he was 4, Padilla and his family moved to Chicago, where he eventually joined a street gang. He was arrested five times, convicted of robbery and battery, and jailed from November 1985 to May 1988.

He found his way to South Florida in 1990 and took the grand tour, apparently living at various times in Lauderhill, Sunrise, Davie and an unincorporated area near Plantation. He worked at a Hilton hotel in Sunrise and a Holiday Inn in Plantation.

He married Cherie Maria Stultz in 1996. It did not go well. They were divorced last year and apparently lived separately since at least February 1999.

''I can't ever imagine her being married to someone like that,'' said Steven Harbin, her landlord at the Nova Arms apartments in Davie.

He said she lived there from February 1999 until this past February and was a devout Muslim who always covered her head. When she applied for the apartment, she listed her marital status as single.

On Monday night, she was staying with her mother in Lake Worth. Police kept reporters at bay.

On the legal front, it did not take long for the cops to become aware of Padilla's presence in South Florida.

On Oct. 8, 1991, 10 days before his 21st birthday, Padilla was driving a Toyota Tercel -- black, with dark tinted windows -- west on Oakland Park Boulevard when his car was nearly hit by another during a rainstorm.

He glared and yelled at the other driver. He rolled down the window. He flashed a silver revolver.

'I said, `Take it easy. It was an accident,' '' Lento, the other driver, said Monday. ``That kid was definitely crazy.''

Trying to glimpse Padilla's license plate, Lento followed him into an Exxon gas station at Oakland Park Boulevard and University Drive.

Padilla fired a single shot. The bullet whizzed past the car, missing Lento and his passenger, Brian Morrill, according to the official report.

''The guy was ice,'' said Lento, 32. ``He put the window back up and drove away.

``He looked like a killer. If anybody I knew in this world was a terrorist, this kid was one.''

Padilla sped off again. Lento gave chase, honking his horn and running a red light. He stopped when a tire blew, but he provided police with a good description of Padilla and his car.

That night, Vitale, the Sunrise police officer, and another officer, Neil Lawrence, staked out the apartment Padilla shared with Stultz at 2315 NW 55th Way in Lauderhill.

He got out of his car. He was wearing the New York Yankees baseball cap described by Lento.

''That was the first time I thought I was going to have to shoot someone,'' Vitale said. ``He was just turning 21 when I arrested him, and he had no fear of pulling a gun on a police officer. You just knew he was going to turn out really bad.''

At the time, Padilla was described as being 5-feet-10 inches tall and weighing 170 pounds.

He had worked at the Holiday Inn in Plantation for two weeks, setting up tables and chairs for banquets. A year earlier, he worked at the Hilton in Sunrise.

He was charged with three felonies: aggravated assault, carrying a concealed weapon and firing a gun from a car.

Three months after his arrest, while being held at the Broward County Jail, he scuffled with a deputy named Marc Albolino.

''The detainee became very loud and hostile toward me,'' Albolino wrote in a statement. 'He was raising his hands in my face and then proceeded to push me in my chest, stating to me, `If you touch me, you don't know what I'll do to you.' ''

''It was violent, and it was to the point where I was in fear of him and the deputies were going to be forced over the top railing the way he was acting,'' said one of those deputies, Cary Morris.

Padilla was charged with battery on a law enforcement officers and resisting an officer without violence. He pleaded guilty to both sets of charges in exchange for a sentence of one year in jail and one year probation.

A federal official said Padilla converted to Islam shortly after his release from the Broward jail.

Veda Coleman-Wright, a spokeswoman for the Broward Sheriff's Office, said the county jail offers regular Islamic services to inmates and makes available copies of the Koran.

Even after the road rage conviction, Padilla drove into trouble, crossing paths with several Broward law enforcement agencies in 1996 and 1997 before leaving the area.

He was stopped five times in 1997 alone, generally for speeding and driving with a suspended license.

The last mark on his record: In November 1997, Cooper City Police cited Padilla for driving with a suspended license and operating a vehicle with unsafe equipment.

Herald staff writers Scott Andron, Jerry Berrios, Erika Bolstad, Hector Florin, Larry Lebowitz, Natalie P. McNeal and Hannah Sampson and Herald research editor Elisabeth Donovan contributed to this report.

Here's the extremely-left South Florida Sun Sentinel version of the story, with some interesting info:

'Dirty bomb' suspect has criminal past in Broward from early '90s
By Christy McKerney
Sun-Sentinel

SUNRISE · Sunrise police Lt. Charlie Vitale recognized the name instantly, even a decade later.

José Padilla lived in Lauderhill when Vitale arrested him after a road-rage shooting incident in 1991. Vitale was a brand new detective, on the job for only two years.

"I almost shot him because he went for his gun," Vitale said.

Padilla is in a lot more trouble now.

Prosecutors announced Monday that Padilla, now Abdullah al-Mujahir after converting to Islam in the early 1990s, is part of an al-Qaida terrorist network that plotted to unleash a radioactive bomb in the U.S.

Padilla told government interrogators after his arrest on May 8 in Chicago that he turned to Islam while incarcerated in the Broward County Jail and ultimately took his Islamic name.

FBI agents showed up at the Sunrise Police Department about a month ago, looking for his fingerprint cards and paperwork, Vitale said.

Like some of the terrorists who flew airplanes into U.S. buildings on Sept. 11, Padilla had ties to South Florida, living here from 1990 to at least 1997. Religious leaders at several local mosques said they did not recognize his name or his photograph.

At the Lake Park Gardens condominium complex in Plantation, there was a plaque quoting scripture on a door to the home of Padilla's mother, Estela Ortega: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." There was also a statue of a cherub reclining, two bows decorated with American flag patterns, and a handwritten note: "Please leave this family in peace."

Victor Olds, Ortega's lawyer, said Monday's announcement regarding the so-called "dirty bomb" plot "caught her off guard" and that before Padilla's arrest at O'Hare, where he arrived from Pakistan, via Zurich, holding $10,000 in cash, his mother thought he was coming home to visit his family.

"She said to me that she never had any information that would have led her to believe that her son was involved in a terrorist group," Olds said. "She knows that he was in the Middle East for a while, but there is nothing else she knows."

When José was 4, his mother, Estela Ortega, moved him to West Chicago from Brooklyn. In West Chicago they lived in a modest rowhouse they shared with two other families; his father apparently died when he was young. Neighbors recalled that his nickname was "Pucho," or pudgy, and that he played softball in the streets.

But law enforcement sources say he ended up pursuing less benign activities. He joined the Latin Kings, a street gang that used to promote itself as a nonviolent source of empowerment for young Latinos before dozens of its leaders were sent to jail. The sources also say he was involved in a gangland murder when he was only 13.

On the night of Aug. 15, 1985, just shy of his 15th birthday, Padilla and five others attacked and robbed three men on a Chicago street, court records said. One victim was fatally stabbed, and Padilla kicked him in the head.

Because he was a juvenile, records are not available on what charge Padilla faced, or the outcome of the case.

In 1991, he moved to Florida, where he was living with a girlfriend and working at hotels for $200 a week -- according to a successful worker's compensation claim that netted him an additional $5 a week -- and driving a car with tinted windows.

On Oct. 8, 1991, Padilla was driving a black Toyota Tercel when he flashed a handgun at two men in another car during a traffic incident. Both cars stopped at a gas station at Oakland Park Boulevard and University Drive, where Padilla pulled out the gun, fired it at their windshield and missed, according to the police report. No one was injured.

"He was a 20-year-old," Vitale said. "He just got angry and he popped off a round."

Staking out the house where Padilla lived with his girlfriend at 2315 NW 55th Terrace in Lauderhill eight hours after the road rage incident, Vitale didn't know about Padilla's extensive arrest record -- a record that included his involvement in a murder and robbery as a juvenile.

Padilla was walking up to the house when Vitale and his partner yelled for him to get on the ground. He started backing up and reached into his waistband for the gun before officers subdued him.

"There are only a couple of times that I could look back and know for sure that something was very close, and that was one of them," Vitale said.

Padilla was charged with aggravated assault, firing a firearm from a vehicle and carrying a concealed weapon in 1991 and spent 303 days in the Broward County Jail.

He told police at the time of his arrest that he had worked for two weeks at the Holiday Inn on University Drive in Plantation, setting up banquet rooms.

While in jail, Padilla received additional charges of battery on a law enforcement officer and resisting without violence after pushing a correctional officer. He also underwent substance abuse treatment.

After his release from jail in 1992, Padilla continued to get in occasional scrapes with the law until he left Florida in 1998 for overseas, authorities said. He is believed to have lived and traveled in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East, officials said.

He was on probation from Aug. 5, 1992, to Aug. 4, 1993, in Broward County, according to Sterling Ivey, spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections.

Padilla, now 31 or 32, was born in Brooklyn. Padilla received his Florida driver's license in August 1993, but picked up a number of traffic citations, beginning with a bicycle violation in 1990 and concluding with a speeding citation in 1997 that led to indefinite suspension of his license. During at least one traffic stop, court documents show, he used the name José Alicea.

Padilla already had an extensive record when he got to South Florida.

On Feb. 16, 1989, Padilla, then 18, was arrested under the alias José Rivera. Police in the gangs unit charged him with punching a man in the face when the man tried to stop Padilla from stealing a doughnut at a Chicago restaurant. Padilla also resisted arrest.

Originally charged with attempted theft, resisting arrest and battery, he was found guilty only of resisting, and sentenced to a year's probation. Police obtained an arrest warrant after he failed to report to his probation officer. At the time, Padilla was a $420 a month hotel dishwasher.

It is unclear whether the warrant was ever served for the probation violation. Padilla may have come to Florida by then.

Padilla lived at a number of locations around South Florida, including the Sundown Apartments in Lauderhill where residents at a yellow and brown garden apartment complex at 5801 NW 17th Place had never heard of him.

Less than a mile from Lauderhill City Hall, Joey Gilmore, a 57-year-old musician, spent the afternoon fielding questions from reporters on the stoop of his apartment at 2315 NW 55th Way in Lauderhill in the Lofts of Atria.

Gilmore, who has rented the apartment for four years, was watching Matlock, on television on Monday when he learned of Padilla during a brief news flash.

Minutes later, news reporters knocked on his door and informed him of Muhajur's link to his two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in the single-story, wood-shingled row house.

"It's weird,'' Gilmore said. "This is the first time I have ever heard of him.''

Back in Chicago, where Padilla grew up, Nelly Ojeda, a former neighbor who lives in the three-story flat where Padilla grew up, was surprised by the news of his arrest.

Ojeda said Padilla's family had lived in Puerto Rico before moving to Chicago.

"He was so quiet, so nice," Ojeda said. "He doesn't look like a person who would do something like that. It would surprise me if he did it."

Wire reports and Staff Writers Robert Nolin, Sallie James, Jeremy Milarsky and Susannah Bryan contributed to this report. Christy McKerney can be reached at cmckerney@sun-sentinel.com or 954-572-2008.

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No specific info relating to where he was in 1995.

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