{"id":259092,"date":"2026-05-05T11:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T11:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/259092\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T11:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T11:24:08","slug":"why-jimmy-ryces-name-belongs-on-a-miami-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/259092\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Jimmy Ryce\u2019s name belongs on a Miami street"},"content":{"rendered":"

\" Don<\/p>\n

Don and Claudine Ryce talk with the media after the announcement by police that Jimmy\u2019s body had been recovered. <\/p>\n

PETER ANDREW BOSCH<\/p>\n

Renaming streets or buildings is usually something of an empty gesture \u2014 performative or just a waste of time and money. Like naming a Florida airport after a sitting president. Or naming a stretch of roadway<\/a> for a city commissioner who resigned from office after pleading guilty to a charge of exploiting public office. (I\u2019m looking at you, Miami.)<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s one renaming idea that even I can\u2019t argue with: Jimmy Ryce Avenue.<\/p>\n

Jimmy Ryce\u2019s short life and violent death changed Miami forever<\/a>. The 9-year-old boy with the gap-toothed smile and bright future was snatched while he was walking home from a school bus stop in southern Miami-Dade County in 1995, a few blocks from his house in the Redland. He was kidnapped, raped and shot, and his dismembered remains were hidden in planters topped with concrete.<\/p>\n

His parents, Don and Claudine Ryce, launched a public crusade to find him, demanding national attention. At the time, it seemed as though everyone in South Florida turned up to help search. It took three months.<\/p>\n

The fifth-grader\u2019s bookbag was discovered in a trailer occupied by farmworker Juan Carlos Chavez. Chavez confessed during a controversial interrogation that lasted more than 50 hours. He was convicted \u2014 I covered the trial in Orlando \u2014 and executed by the state in 2014.<\/p>\n

Now Miami-Dade County is going to co-designate a portion of Southwest 162nd Avenue as Jimmy Ryce Avenue,<\/a> \u201censuring that the memory of Samuel James \u2018Jimmy\u2019 Ryce and the community\u2019s commitment to protecting children will never be forgotten,\u201d according to a news release from Danielle Cohen Higgins, the county commissioner who sponsored the resolution.<\/p>\n

\"Poster Poster and flowers outside the home ofJimmy Ryce in 1995. Al Diaz Herald staff <\/p>\n

Jimmy Ryce really is a symbol \u2014 of child advocacy, of victims\u2019 rights, of the plight of missing children. If anyone\u2019s name should be remembered, it\u2019s his.<\/p>\n

His case changed the way we treat sex predators. The Jimmy Ryce Act of 1998, a law his devastated parents pushed for, allows the state to hold certain sexually violent predators in a secure civil commitment center even after they have completed criminal sentences.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s the Jimmy Ryce Center, founded by Don and Claudine Ryce, that raises money for bloodhounds to help law enforcement officers in searches. The Ryces, who are both gone now, were convinced that a bloodhound could have found their son; the trailer where he was held turned out to be less than a mile from their home.<\/p>\n

A small army of reporters covered the 1998 trial of Chavez. The case had been moved to Orlando to ensure an impartial jury. I had been in Miami courtrooms many times when the Ryces, two attorneys who never missed a hearing in their son\u2019s case, had to sit through stomach-turning testimony and endure procedural slowdowns. You could see the pain in their crumpled posture, weighed down by this unspeakable thing that had happened to their child.<\/p>\n

\"Jimmy Jimmy Ryce. Photo supplied by Ryce family. JON KRAL MIAMI HERALD <\/p>\n

But in Orlando, it was even worse. Chavez was in the same room. I have always remembered one moment when a juror brought the trial to a temporary halt by bursting into tears.<\/p>\n

A police officer had been describing the horrific contents of one pot: \u201cA left leg with a shoe attached and a skull.\u201d The courtroom was still. Then the juror in the front row broke into loud, heart-breaking sobs. It was a wrenching moment for everyone \u2014 but in many ways, it felt appropriate. How else is a person supposed to act when confronted with such monstrousness?<\/p>\n

The last time I saw Don Ryce<\/a> was in February 2014, a few days before the scheduled execution of his son\u2019s killer. He had moved a bit north, to Vero Beach. He and Claudine had promised each other that they would see Chavez draw his last breath. And \u201cif one of us wasn\u2019t going to be there, the other would, for both,\u201d he said. Claudine did not live to see that day. She died in 2009 \u2014 of a broken heart, Don Ryce said. He passed away in 2020.<\/p>\n

He was there for the end, though. Chavez, who never expressed remorse, was put to death on Feb. 13, 2014.<\/p>\n

Jimmy Ryce would be 40 by now. His legacy is all around us \u2014 in the activism of his late parents, in the center that bears his name and, now, on a stretch of road near his house in Miami-Dade. Commemorating his name in this way is, for once, absolutely the right thing to do.<\/p>\n

Amy Driscoll is the opinion editor for the Miami Herald.<\/p>\n


\n \"Profile
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Amy Driscoll is the opinion editor for the Miami Herald.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don and Claudine Ryce talk with the media after the announcement by police that Jimmy\u2019s body had been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":["post-259092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}