MIAMI — Four days after a German tourist who inadvertently drove her rental car into an inner-city Miami neighborhood was assaulted, robbed and killed, the resulting outcry has turned the slaying into an international incident.
In Bonn, the German government issued a list of "precautionary measures" for nationals planning to visit Florida, the first time in memory such a travel advisory has been issued for a U.S. destination.
"We're very concerned about the situation there, but we don't want to overreact," said a Foreign Ministry spokesman. "It's not as if we want to say that Florida is especially bad or more brutal than anywhere else. It's clearly no worse than New York."
Nonetheless, Florida officials scrambled to control whatever damage the worldwide publicity about the attack might cause to the state's $30-billion tourist industry, especially after recent waves of violence against French Canadian visitors to the Miami area and a rash of rock-throwing incidents last November which had National Guard troops patrolling an interstate highway near Jacksonville.
Barbara Jensen Meller, a 39-year-old physical therapist from Berlin, arrived in Miami Friday with her two young children and her mother. After picking up a red Ford Taurus from Alamo Rent-A-Car, she was heading from Miami International Airport to a Miami Beach hotel when apparently she became lost and pulled off Interstate 95 just north of downtown.
In a technique favored by smash-and-grab robbers, her car was rear-ended, and when Jensen got out to inspect the damage, at least two men attacked her and grabbed her purse. As they fled, they ran over Jensen with their car, crushing her head. Her horrified children and mother looked on.
She was the third German and sixth foreign visitor to be killed in Florida since December.
Gov. Lawton Chiles asked U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, the former chief prosecutor in Miami, if new federal laws against carjacking could also be used to convict criminals who prey on tourists. He also said he would take to a special session of the legislature a request that the telltale word "lease" as well as the Y and Z letters on rental car license plates be banned. To thieves, the special plates are known as "Rob me" tags, Miami police say.