Charges stem from the execution of a search warrant as police investigate allegations of domestic violence and a gang-related homicide.
Late on Thursday morning last week, heavily-armed Miami police SWAT officers, backed up by the department’s gang unit and agents with the FBI’s violent gang task force, rolled up on a small house on Charles Terrace and shouted for everyone inside to come out immediately.
Among those who obeyed the command was Patricia Dupuch, a 73-year-old retired teacher, and about seven other people, including young children, who were either inside or just arriving. All were herded to the middle of the street and ordered to sit down on the pavement next to a police truck.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” Dupuch said. “They didn’t tell us anything.”
One person who did not obey the initial police command was the man targeted by the raid: Dupuch’s grandson, 21-year-old Dwight A. Dupuch, Jr.
“As SWAT arrived [police] observed Dupuch walking toward the front of the residence,” police said in an arrest affidavit. “Dupuch disregarded the commands and fled into the residence through the side kitchen door. Dupuch was then apprehended by SWAT operators.”
The reason for the January 30 raid – authorized by a circuit judge’s approval of a search warrant a day earlier – was “a gang related homicide investigation,” according to the arrest affidavit.
From inside the house at 3720 Charles Terrace, police said they recovered eight firearms, several forms of identification and 11 debit and credit cards “belonging to other persons.”
Dupuch was arrested on charges that include unlawful possession of five or more forms of identification and resisting an officer without violence – resulting from the raid – along with charges of aggravated assault with a firearm and battery stemming from two earlier incidents involving a former girlfriend.
“The case is ongoing and far-reaching,” Commander Daniel Kerr, in charge of the police officers assigned to Coconut Grove, told the Spotlight.
Detectives working the case have declined to comment on the arrest of Dupuch or provide any information on alleged links to gang activity or unsolved homicides.
In July 2024 the Spotlight published a report in which Kerr tied the murders of two men who grew up in the Grove to squabbles among gang members involved in “tax fraud, skimming credit cards, Covid-era stuff [where they] can make more money than in violent crimes. It’s hard to catch them.”

Demonte “Red” Poitier, 24, was gunned down February 13 as he sat in his car in the 3300 block of Plaza Street. Just three weeks later, another Coral Gables High School alumnus, 23-year-old Rasaad Sawyer, was killed in Miami’s Brownsville neighborhood when unknown shooters opened fire on a car in which he was traveling.
Both killings remain unsolved, and police have not said that the arrest of Dupuch is connected to those cases.
Antron A. Ware, 32, another grandson of Patricia Dupuch who lives in the Charles Terrace house, told the Spotlight that all eight of the weapons seized on January 30 belong to him, and are registered.
Among those guns are a Remington shotgun, a .45 caliber pistol and a Glenfield 75, a .22 caliber rifle often used for target shooting. Ware said the rifle was an antique that belonged to his great-grandfather. “I’m a collector,” he said.
Ware said he was not in the house when the raid began. But when he returned, he said, he was put in handcuffs and held in the back of a police car for four hours. He was not charged.
The Dupuch family has been touched by violence previously.
In September 2019, Dwight Dupuch’s father, also named Dwight Dupuch, was shot and killed outside a market at 3344 SW 37th Avenue in the West Grove. He was 37. Patricia Dupuch, his mother, said no one was ever charged in her son’s slaying.
Meanwhile, it was unclear Monday if Dwight A. Dupuch was still in police custody or if he had posted bond. His next court appearance is scheduled for February 26.