Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law will soon be put to the test. The scrutiny will come from the case of the death of 25-year-old Maame Amuah. Amuah was fatally shot on May 6, 2021 by Haider Rana. Now, after more than a year after the night Amuah was shot, Rana, 24, has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder with a firearm.
Rana’s arrest comes after his self-defense claims were seen as unjustified by Miami-Dade police. According to the Miami Herald, Rana claimed that he unknowingly shot Amuah after assuming she was an intruder. He claimed someone “aggressively knocked on his door and squatted down so they could not be seen in the peephole.” He then stated that the person attempted to “push the door” open, which is when he fired.
Miami-Dade prosecutors arrived on the scene to find Amuah. The woman was reported as unarmed. Amuah lived across the street from Rana and his luxury Brickell condo. According to reports, Rana claims the two had just entered a friends-with-benefits relationship.
The two had only been seeing each other for less than a month. Amuah was a native of Ghana and moved to the U.S. in 2016. She relocated to Miami in 2020, where she lived with her brother. She worked in the fashion and beauty industry.
Rana is the owner of The Plug Delivery, an internet app that delivers marijuana, alcohol and CBD products to customers’ homes.
According to police reports, the investigation revealed that Amuah had been calling Rana all day and wanted to see him that evening.
During the initial investigation, Rana told police Amuah had been “blowing up his phone.” His cellphone records proved his statement to be true, showing she had called him 18 times in the 24 hours before she was shot.
Rana possibly ignored Amuah’s calls because he was in his home with another woman. Miami Herald reports that Rana was in the company of Abi-Gail Dwyer, a 26-year-old King of Diamonds dancer.
He had invited her to a pool party at his building that day, and she was in his apartment with him watching a movie at the time of the shooting.
Dwyer told police that between 11:30 p.m. and 11:45 p.m., the two heard a light knock on the door but dismissed it, assuming it was the television. She claims, shortly after, the knock got louder, and that’s when Rana grabbed the FN 509 pistol and went to the door.
The witness stated that Rana opened the door but did not speak to anyone. She then heard the sound of the gun.
Rana’s attorneys are claiming the shooting was in self-defense.
In a statement made to NBC Miami, his defense attorney stated, “There was an unknown assailant on the other side of the door at his apartment banging on the door multiple times at near one in the morning.” The lawyer continued, “He’s asking, ‘who’s there, who’s there,’ and no answer. 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.”
Amuah’s mother, Jonell Jackson-Manu, disagrees with Rana’s self-defense claims against her daughter.
In her interview following his arrest, she stated, “This guy knew my daughter was coming. She had been calling for him for two days. He got angry because my daughter kept calling and texting. He was with another girl in the room.”
The grieving mother continued stating that deadly force was not justified. “What if it had been someone else at the door? A delivery person? It could have been a security guard. It could have been a neighbor who wanted help.”
She was satisfied with Rana’s arrest. “It’s a hole in my heart that will never go away. All I want is justice for my daughter, so she can rest. She didn’t deserve that. That boy took her life for nothing.”
Rana’s self-defense claims correlate with Flordia’s “stand your ground” law, as defined on Bill Of Rights Institute. The law was passed in 2005. It allows those who feel a reasonable threat of death or bodily injury to “meet force with force” rather than retreat.
The law gained national attention in 2012 after Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman in Stanford, Florida. The self-proclaimed neighborhood patrol’s lawyers did not use the law in their argument but after jurors received instructions on the law, it was used as grounds to acquit him of murder charges.
After a year of being free, Rana was arrested on Nov. 18. On Nov. 20, a Miami-Dade judge ordered him to be held with no bond pending trial.
