BOYNTON BEACH —Mohamed Shihadeh and woman overdosed after taking drugs in March
The man who first alerted Boynton Beach Police that Dalia Dippolito was trying to hire a hitman to kill her husband, was part of an investigation into a drug overdose death in March.
According to a police report and after a three month police investigation, Mohamed Shihadeh, 36, was found unconscious outside of a room at the Homing Inn on March 21.
The body of Linda Lavell, 34, a homeless mother of three, was on the floor inside the room.
Police said the man who called 911, Jean Carlos Pierre-Louise, told them Shihadeh and Lavell, who had just met, told him they were going to have sex the next morning so a “rich couple” could watch and pay them between $500 and $1,000.
He said all three were sharing the room, and when he woke up in the middle of the night, Lavell told him Shihadeh was overdosing. Instead of calling 911, as Pierre-Louise advised, he said Lavell told him she knew what to do, and poured cold water on Shihadeh’s face and began chest compressions.
Pierre-Louise said he went back to sleep, and didn’t know anything was amiss until he awoke the next day and saw Lavell lying on Shihadeh’s bare chest on the bed.
Pierre-Louise said he touched Lavell’s back to wake her but she was cold to the touch and her face looked like a “mannequin.”
When police arrived, they said Lavell was on the floor in a fetal position and Shihadeh collapsed outside the room’s door. Police said they do not know how they were moved from the bed.
Investigators found a line of white powder on a counter, a syringe and a crack pipe under the mattress.
Paramedics took Shihadeh to the hospital where he told them while seeking drugs, he had met Lavell at a park the night before, and that he and another man went with her to the motel.
Once there, Shihadeh said a man who knew Lavell told him to take heroin and cocaine to prove he wasn’t a cop, which Shihadeh did.
Police noted Shihadeh said he was in a lot of pain and couldn’t physically sign or initial his statement.
Three months later he was in court, testifying that his friend and former lover, Dippolito, had asked him to find a hitman to kill her husband.
Shihadeh also testified he felt pressured by police to become an informant in the case, when he just wanted to make sure Dippolito did not go through with her plan to have a gang leader he’d introduced to her accept the hitman job.
Just as in her first trial, Dippolito cried when Shihadeh took the stand, something she did not do when prosecutors played the infamous video of her negotiating with him to hire the hitman.
Police did not charge Shihadeh with any crime following Lavell’s death.
Dippolito remains in jail and faces sentencing Jul. 21. She could be sentenced to as much as 20 years in prison, although she has spent eight years on house arrest.
Mariepip
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