It was a hostage situation, Joe Marino said Thursday during a break in a court proceeding. If the police had just treated it as such, waited for a negotiator, cleared the area, Marino said, his stepson would be alive today.

The debate over how police handled the 2019 kidnapping of UPS driver Frank Ordoñez entered its fourth day of testimony Thursday , with Broward Circuit Judge Ernest Kollra hearing from expert witnesses about police training and protocol in some of the most challenging aspects of their job.

For Marino, the question is not difficult to answer. Lamar Alexander and Ronnie Jerome Hill had robbed a Coral Gables jewelry store, escaped, carjacked Ordoñez and led police on a chase from Miami to a busy Miramar intersection, where traffic stopped them from proceeding.

A shooto

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