A parking citation is never fun to find on your windshield, but for most of us it results in a sigh, a credit card, and maybe a promise to ourselves to read the signs more carefully next time. For one Miami Beach man, police say the reaction went in a very different direction, and it involved a motorcycle, a bar, and a sharp metal object aimed at the tires of a city-owned truck.
William Roa, 40, was arrested Tuesday and now faces charges of aggravated assault on an official employee and criminal mischief, according to an arrest report. The chain of events that got him there started back on March 5, when a Miami Beach Parking Department officer wrote up a citation for a motorcycle illegally parked in the 200 block of Espanola Way. That’s about as routine as parking enforcement gets.
Routine, that is, until the bike’s owner walked out of a nearby bar about five minutes later. Police say Roa spotted the ticket, got angry, and confronted the officer on the spot. From there, things escalated in a way that no glovebox full of parking tickets could have predicted.
What followed wasn’t just a heated word or two. According to investigators, Roa trailed the officer on his motorcycle for roughly 20 minutes, allegedly threatening to hurt him the entire time. Not long after that, the officer discovered two tires on his city-issued truck had gone flat, seemingly out of nowhere.
Surveillance Video Tells the Story
As it turns out, nothing goes unnoticed in South Beach for long. Investigators pulled surveillance footage that reportedly showed Roa slashing the truck’s tires with a sharp metal object, according to NBC Miami.
The parking officer was later able to pick Roa out of a photo lineup, which is the kind of evidence that tends to make a case fall into place pretty quickly.
A Ticket That Cost Way More Than the Fine
Here’s the thing about parking tickets: they’re annoying, but they’re also cheap compared to the alternative. A citation might run you somewhere in the double digits. Getting booked on an aggravated assault charge and a criminal mischief charge is an entirely different price tag, one that includes bail, court dates, and a mugshot that isn’t going anywhere.
If Roa had just paid the ticket and grumbled about it over a second drink, he’d likely be telling this story to friends as a minor inconvenience instead of explaining it to a judge.
Not His First Rodeo With Police
Court records cited in the report also show Roa isn’t exactly a stranger to law enforcement. Police say he has 14 prior arrests in Miami-Dade County, with charges ranging from carrying a concealed firearm to battery, obstruction, and resisting. That kind of history tends to work against you when a judge is deciding how seriously to take a fresh set of charges.
At the end of the day, motorcycles and city trucks alike need their tires intact to actua