Nathaniel Baez’s family says an employee escalated a perceived threat instead of alerting store management before a fatal 2023 shooting.

FLORIDA CITY, Fla. — The family of a 23-year-old man killed inside a South Florida Walmart is pressing a negligence case against the retail giant, alleging an employee ignored company procedures and summoned acquaintances to confront shoppers before a fight erupted into gunfire near the store’s checkout area.

Nathaniel Baez was fatally shot July 19, 2023, after a dispute that began elsewhere in the Florida City store and later drew together Baez’s group, Walmart employee Roberto Acevedo and two men who had come from outside the store, according to police accounts, surveillance-video reporting and allegations in the family’s civil case. The lawsuit seeks to hold Walmart responsible in part because Acevedo was working at the time and, according to the family, should have reported the situation to management rather than arranging an outside confrontation. Walmart has not publicly accepted responsibility for Baez’s death.

The dispute began while Acevedo, then 20, was working as a digital shopper, a job that involved collecting merchandise from store aisles for customers who placed online orders. The family’s filing says Acevedo left a large work cart in a position that forced Baez, several companions and a small child to squeeze around it. According to the filing, Acevedo later said one person in Baez’s group glared at him and muttered an obscenity while passing. Acevedo interpreted the encounter as threatening and believed the group might attack him, the filing says. Those details form part of the plaintiffs’ account and have not been established as findings by a jury.

The family’s lawyers say what Acevedo did next is central to the civil case. Rather than notify a salaried manager, as the lawsuit says employees were trained to do when they perceived possible danger, Acevedo allegedly went to retrieve his phone and contacted relatives. Through those calls, according to the filing, he ultimately reached people connected with Steve Lestin and Ji’mari Hodge. The lawsuit alleges Acevedo wanted the men to come to the store and confront the shoppers. The filing further alleges that Acevedo knew Lestin regularly carried a firearm and noted that Hodge had previously been arrested in a firearm case. Those allegations are being advanced by the plaintiffs as evidence that Acevedo increased the risk of violence instead of reducing it.

After Lestin and Hodge arrived, they joined Acevedo and approached the Baez group, according to the lawsuit. The filing says one of Baez’s companions had been holding a child and handed the child to someone else as the men approached. An argument followed, then a physical fight. Surveillance video obtained by Local 10 shortly after the shooting showed a group gathered in an aisle near the front registers before the encounter became physical. Moments later, a man could be seen firing a gun. Police said the shooting occurred at about 3 p.m. at the Walmart at 33501 South Dixie Highway.

Baez was struck and taken to a hospital, where he died. Police and local news reports identified another victim as a 72-year-old man who was shot in the foot while in the store. He survived. Other customers were hurt amid the rush to escape, according to contemporary reporting, including a woman who suffered a head injury after falling. Witnesses described people running after hearing gunfire. The shooting turned what police initially described as a dispute between groups into a homicide investigation involving three arrests.

Police arrested Lestin, Acevedo and Hodge after the shooting. Authorities identified Lestin, then 25, as the alleged gunman and charged him with second-degree murder and an attempted-murder offense. Police reports cited by local news organizations said Lestin acknowledged firing the shots. Acevedo and Hodge were arrested on battery allegations arising from the confrontation. The criminal accusations are separate from the family’s negligence lawsuit, and criminal charges are allegations unless and until proved in court. Law&Crime reported in August 2026 that Lestin was still described as facing second-degree murder and attempted-murder charges while Acevedo and Hodge were described as facing battery charges.

The civil case asks a different question: whether Walmart bears legal responsibility for conduct that the family says occurred while its employee was on duty. The estate argues that Walmart owed customers a duty to keep the premises reasonably safe and that Acevedo’s employment placed his conduct within the company’s responsibility. The family also says Walmart’s own safety procedures anticipated the type of concern Acevedo claimed to have experienced. According to the plaintiffs, an employee who sees threatening or unusual behavior is supposed to notify management and, when appropriate, law enforcement rather than personally escalate the situation.

Attorney Todd Michaels, who represents Baez’s family, has argued publicly that the fatal chain of events could have been interrupted if Acevedo had followed that process. Michaels told Local 10 that Acevedo believed the shoppers were going to attack him but, instead of contacting a manager, called friends to come to the store. The lawsuit says management could have separated Acevedo from the customers, monitored the group and allowed them to leave without a confrontation. That is the plaintiffs’ theory of causation, and Walmart will have an opportunity to dispute both the factual allegations and the claim that the company is legally liable for Acevedo’s alleged actions.

The family is also using the litigation to examine what Walmart knew about Acevedo before the shooting. A filing cited by Law&Crime alleges he had a prior history of violent conduct and had reported another altercation inside the store in the days before Baez was killed. The significance of those allegations remains a matter for the litigation. The publicly available materials reviewed for this article do not establish that Walmart knew Acevedo would summon outside individuals, knew someone would bring a firearm or expected the July 19 confrontation to become deadly.

Walmart’s initial public statement after the shooting did not address those later civil allegations. The company said at the time that it was saddened by what happened, expressed sympathy to Baez’s loved ones and said one associate had been suspended. It also said it would continue cooperating with law enforcement. When the lawsuit received renewed attention in August 2026, Law&Crime reported that Walmart had not responded to its request for comment about the civil claims.

The legal action was filed in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court under case number 2024-002671-CA-01 by Samuel A. Baez and Betsabe Santos Martinez as co-personal representatives of Nathaniel Baez’s estate. Court records identify Wal-Mart Stores East LP, Acevedo and Lestin among the defendants, and filings have also involved security contractor Brosnan Risk Consultants Ltd. Corp. The docket categorizes the dispute as a negligent-security case. Discovery continued during 2026, including requests for Walmart records related to Acevedo’s employment and work schedule.

By January 2026, the plaintiffs had filed a notice asking that the case be placed on the next available jury-trial calendar, estimating that a trial would take about five days. Additional filings followed in the spring, including discovery requests and Walmart’s responses. The case remained listed as open in the court-record materials reviewed for this article. Those records do not establish that a jury has decided Walmart’s liability, and the available materials reviewed here do not show a final judgment resolving the family’s claims.

For Baez’s relatives, the litigation follows more than three years of criminal and civil proceedings arising from a shopping trip that ended with his death. His mother, Betsabe Santos, told Local 10 in August that learning her son had been shot and killed shattered the family. The civil case now places the focus on whether decisions made before the gunfire — particularly Acevedo’s alleged decision to bring outsiders into a workplace dispute — created a danger Walmart had a legal duty to prevent.

Author note: Last updated Sept. 28, 2026.