Relatives said the married couple had separated before Wednesday’s shooting at an apartment in northeast Miami-Dade County.
MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FL — Authorities have identified a 57-year-old woman and a 64-year-old man who died Wednesday night in a murder-suicide at a northeast Miami-Dade apartment, where investigators said the woman had gone to retrieve personal belongings.
The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office identified the woman as Denis Del Carmen Polo Fuentes and the man as Franky Paba. Deputies said Polo Fuentes went to the residence in the 17000 block of Northeast 14th Avenue shortly after 7 p.m. on Oct. 28. Investigators said Paba allowed her inside, then shot her before dying by suicide. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue pronounced both dead at the scene.
The sheriff’s office described the shooting as domestic in nature and said its Homicide Bureau was continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths. An official update released Thursday listed Polo Fuentes as the victim and Paba as the subject. Authorities initially said they were still working to confirm the exact relationship between the two.
Relatives later told South Florida news organizations that Polo Fuentes and Paba were married but had separated. Paba’s brother-in-law told CBS News Miami that the couple had broken up about two months before the shooting. Family members said they knew the relationship had become difficult but did not expect it to end in violence.
A cousin of Polo Fuentes, Maria Espinosa, told NBC 6 that she accompanied Polo Fuentes to the apartment Wednesday so she could collect her belongings. Espinosa said she was inside when the confrontation became violent and escaped from the apartment. She described Polo Fuentes as a happy person who had moved to the United States from Colombia about 10 years ago.
Espinosa also told NBC 6 that Polo Fuentes had previously tried to obtain a restraining order. The station reported that it checked court records but did not find paperwork confirming that claim, and police had not verified it. No official information released by the sheriff’s office Thursday indicated whether deputies had previously responded to incidents involving the couple.
The shooting occurred at the Mar-Len Gardens community near Northeast 14th Avenue and 171st Street. Deputies responding to reports of gunfire found the two adults with gunshot wounds. Authorities said no children were inside the apartment. Investigators were also examining whether surveillance cameras in the area recorded anything that could help establish the events leading to the shooting.
Neighbors told local reporters that the deaths stunned residents of the community. Marcos Mustafa, a Mar-Len Gardens resident, told Local 10 News that outsiders may never fully know what was happening within the relationship before the shooting. Other residents described the neighborhood as generally quiet and said a violent incident of this kind was unusual there.
The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office said the investigation remains active. Detectives had not publicly released additional findings about what preceded the confrontation beyond saying that Polo Fuentes had gone to the residence for her belongings and that the incident was domestic in nature.
Author note: Last updated October 30, 2026.