A Florida entrepreneur is facing murder charges more than a year after killing a woman in front of his downtown Miami condo.
Authorities say Haider Rana shot a woman he had a sexual relationship with seconds after she knocked on his door while he was in his home with another woman.
Maame Amuah, 25, lived across the street, according to reports. Rana’s lawyers said she called over a dozen times in the 24 hours leading up to her death in May 2021.
Rana initially claimed he shot the woman in self-defense, telling police that a stranger knocked on the door, squatted below the peephole, and “pushed the door open.” But after several months of investigation, local prosecutors rejected the claims.
Miami police arrested Rana on Nov. 18 for second-degree murder with a firearm. He is being held with no bond.
“This guy knew my daughter was coming. She had been calling for him for two days,” the victim’s mother, Jonell Jackson-Manu, told the Miami Herald. “He got angry because my daughter kept calling and texting. He was with another girl in the room.”
Amuah, who moved from Ghana to the United States in 2016, had started dating Rana about a month before the shooting. He claimed that they were merely friends with benefits. Rana moved from New York to Miami in 2020 and was in the fashion and beauty industry. She reportedly started doing business with Rana, one of the executives of The Plug Delivery, a delivery app for cannabis, food, alcohol and CBD products.
Rana was reportedly in his condo on May 6, 2021, when Amuah came to his door as he was watching a movie with Abi-Gail Dwyer, an exotic dancer he met at the King of Diamonds strip club.
According to reports, Dwyer told police she heard a “light knock” on the door around 11:45 p.m. Rana approached the door but did not open it, Dwyer told police. Instead, he told her it might be the television.
About five minutes later, Dwyer said she heard a louder knock, and Rana grabbed his pistol, walked to the door, and opened it. He didn’t speak to anyone, but she then heard gunfire, Dwyer told police.
“I told her to be careful about this guy,” Jackson-Manu said.
Rana’s defense attorney said during his bond hearing that he responded to “an unknown assailant on the other side of the door at his apartment banging on the door multiple times at nearly 1 in the morning.”
“He’s asking, ‘who’s there, who’s there,’ and no answer,” his attorney said. “The moment he cracks the door open to see if there’s someone hiding underneath the eye hole, the door gets kicked open, the assailant comes in and he takes one shot.”
Florida’s self-defense authorizes a person to use deadly force if they “reasonably” believe it is necessary to “prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself, or another, or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony.”
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