A routine red light conversation about speeding near a school turned into a shattered car window and an arrest in Kendall on Monday afternoon, after a 24-year-old man reportedly decided a pellet gun was the appropriate response to being called out for reckless driving. The incident unfolded at the intersection of Sunset Drive and Southwest 97th Avenue in southwestern Miami-Dade County, where what started as a civic-minded exchange between two drivers escalated in a matter of seconds into something significantly more serious.
According to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office arrest report, Daniel Cancio was stopped at a red light when another driver pulled up alongside him and brought up what they had witnessed: Cancio speeding through a school zone. Rather than accepting the criticism or, at minimum, staring straight ahead and waiting for the light to change, Cancio allegedly reached into the rear area of his vehicle and produced what the other driver described as a firearm. It turned out to be a pellet gun, which Cancio then used to shatter the rear passenger-side window of the other driver’s car.
The victims had enough composure in the moment to photograph Cancio’s license plate, which is how deputies were able to locate and arrest him shortly after 3:45 p.m. at an address on SW 72nd Street. When confronted by law enforcement, Cancio did not attempt to deny what happened. He admitted to firing what he called a “warning shot.” Whether he intended that framing to help his case is unclear, but the admission was apparently thorough enough to fill out an arrest report with little ambiguity…