Miami's Tourist Trap

By Kevin Fedarko

Perhaps the most unsettling thing about last week's killing of a German tourist in Miami is that Uwe-Wilhelm Rakebrand and his wife were perfectly willing to start their belated honeymoon by behaving like urban guerrillas. They had the right attitude for a city where five foreign tourists have been killed so far this year: if you want a vacation in Miami, train for it. Before departing in their rental car from the airport last Tuesday, they mapped out their route in advance. They kept to the main road. They stored their valuables out of sight, drove at a brisk pace, and Kathrin even spent the ride reading from a safety brochure (distributed in seven languages by Alamo Rent A Car).

She had just finished admonishing her husband not to fall for the bump-and- rob ploy when the yellow Ryder truck rammed them twice from behind. Keep driving, she told him. But none of it did any good. Ever since Hurricane Andrew lumbered through the area last year and ripped all the lightposts from the Dolphin Expressway, the section of road where the Rakebrands found themselves at 12:30 a.m. has been tar black at night. And perhaps it was this inky cover that encouraged a frustrated teenager to pull out a sawed-off rifle and blast a .30-cal. slug through the window and into the back of the 33-year- old agricultural engineer. He died instantly.

Kathrin, who is four months pregnant, survived the ensuing crash unharmed. By Friday, police had already arrested the 20-year-old triggerwoman, a 5-ft. 3-in., 210 pounder with gold-capped teeth whom friends likened to "Gangsta Bitch," the tough street woman described in the rap song by Apache. Police also grabbed Alvan Hudson, 19, who they say was in the truck as well. The day before, they arrested the driver of the truck, Recondall Wiggins, 19, who seemed so stunned by the deed that he ran to confess it to his mother, a secretary in the Metro Dade police department. "Momma! Did you hear about the tourist that got shot? I'm going to prison 'cause we did it," he told her. Barely an hour after the crime, he, Jones, and a third cruising bandit even drove back to the police-packed scene in a stolen car to see what they had done.

Rakebrand's murder seemed to repudiate Miami's efforts over the past six months to protect its most precious industry, tourism, which last year pumped $7.3 billion into the local economy. The highly publicized death of another German tourist last April, who was run over in front of her mother and two children in a similar hit-and-rob attack, led the city to install new streetlights, post road signs to help visitors avoid unsafe areas and set up a task force that does everything from providing escorts for lost tourists to patrolling under cover to catch would-be thieves on the prowl.

Partly as a result, tourist robberies in Dade County have dropped 80% since February. But Miami's latest outrage seems to have crossed a psychological threshold in the minds of residents and guests alike. More than 30,000 wanted felons are now on the streets in Dade County alone, and people are losing patience with a revolving-door justice system that rotates criminals back onto the streets practically as fast as they are caught. Miami has the highest violent-crime rate of any American city, and even former priests have been known to pack pistols in their briefcases. So far, however, the tourists are still coming, even if some may be thinking about packing a mercenary kit with their suntan lotion.

With reporting by Cathy Booth/Miami and Rhea Schoenthal/Bonn