A man caught on video surveillance beating a transgender woman to death — smacking her on her head and face with a pipe as she slept near the Miami City Ballet building in Miami Beach Tuesday — has been arrested, police said.
Gregory Fitzgerald Gibert, 53, who was out on probation, is charged with the second-degree murder of the woman, whom police have not identified by her name. He was booked into a Miami-Dade County jail where he remained as of Wednesday morning.
Around 7 a.m. Tuesday, an employee of Miami City Ballet, 2200 Liberty Ave., spotted the woman on the floor and tried to wake her up, according to Gibert’s arrest report. When the employee saw blood around the woman, he called 911 and paramedics found her dead.
Surveillance footage from Miami City Ballet shows the woman lying down by the building’s entrance around midnight, police said in the report.
Hours later, a man is seen looking around and at her, walking away and picking up a pipe from the ground before sitting on a bench near the woman, police said. That’s when the man — later identified as Gibert — walked toward the woman and “begins to strike her with the metal pipe about the head and face several times.”
After beating her, Gibert is seen walking away and placing the pipe in a nearby trashcan, where cops found it later, police said.
READ MORE: Miami Beach police investigating after woman beaten to death near Miami City Ballet: sources
After matching Gibert’s physical description to one of his previous mugshots, police found him at 1524 NW First St. hours later before taking him to the police station, where he declined to speak with officers. Police say Gibert was wearing some of the same bloodstained clothes he had on during the attack.
Out on probation?
The beating death happened six days after Gibert was sentenced to four years probation for aggravated assault with no intent to kill and attempted robbery with a weapon. Gibert also got one year in prison for those crimes from April 5, 2023, but his 377 days in county corrections custody before sentencing counted as time served.
Gibert’s address is listed as “unknown” on the current arrest form, but his Florida Department of Corrections online entry says he was living in a rented house on Northwest First Avenue in Miami.
This story will be updated.