The former landlord of a man who police believed stabbed a 17-year-old to death at a luxury Brickell high-rise shared his distress at the news of the killing — and why he said he knew something wasn't right with the suspect.
Dominic Ferrell was staying with his father at the Icon Brickell building on Sunday morning when Miami Police said he was stabbed to death by a stranger in his sleep.
That stranger was later identified by Miami Police as 26-year-old Kyrill Kehl.
"It made my stomach drop. I mean I'm telling you," Mitchell Maggard, Kehl's former landlord, said to NBC6. "Once again, I'm not surprised."
According to investigators, Kehl brutally stabbed Ferrell multiple times while the teen slept.
Investigators believe he fell from an upper floor, but it's still unclear whether it was accidental or intentional.
Surveillance cameras captured Kehl fleeing the building and entering a nearby construction site across Brickell Avenue. Later that day, he was found dead at the site.
“I'm terribly sorry. When I found out the news, I couldn't believe it, but at the same time I could,” Maggard said. “I got the worst vibes from that guy when he was my tenant... There was just something off.”
Kehl lived in one of Maggard's Miami Beach rentals for a year, more than a year ago.
"It didn't take me until about the second time that I met him, that I encountered him, that there was something really, really, really wrong, and... it didn't settle right with me," Maggard said. "We kind of just got the ick."
He recalled a time he showed up at the property to check in and inspect the place, which he described as an uninhabitable, concerning mess.
“The furniture was completely destroyed, you couldn't live in these conditions, there was rugs peeled back there was trash everywhere, mold, food,” Maggard said.
Maggard went on to describe spoiled food, more flies in a small space than he had ever seen, vomit all over and "a rifle that I noticed that was behind a curtain, and he had bullets that were just kind of scattered throughout the floor."
"No one can live like this unless he has a really serious mental condition," Maggard said.
He said the bed had no sheets, was covered in urine stains, and there was a pipe in the shower.
One closet was "filled with trash, like beer cans, broken furniture."
"It's like, he threw everything in there just to last minute kind of clean up. And it was top to bottom, and I have about 10 foot ceilings in my place, so there was so much trash in this place, and I go in my bedroom—shades are broken. He had, almost like he stapled in duct tape curtains, blackout curtains, over windows, which was also really alarming," Maggard said.
And when Maggard and his business partner tried to go into the other closet, he said Kehl wouldn't let them in.
Kehl allegedly told them, "'I just can't, I can't allow you to go in that closet.' And we kind of left it there and in that moment, I said, this guy is really sick in the head," Maggard said.
NBC6 has not obtained any reports that would indicate that Kehl had a criminal history.
Authorities said Kehl, who has a history of mental health issues, was visiting Miami from Arizona. Police said Ferrell and Kehl had no prior interactions and were unknown to each other.
"I almost feel a lot of guilt and remorse that I didn't speak up sooner, but I didn't have enough evidence and there wasn't anything illegal at the time to call the cops," Maggard said.
Ferrell had been a student at Sts. Peter & Paul Catholic School in Miami, and was most recently a student at Miami Beach Senior High.
A judge has granted Ferrell's mother an emergency motion to retrieve his body, as the family prepares for his funeral.
