Ricky DeMaria was a drug dealer, with a rap sheet of arrests for dealing, who also worked with his friend Lewis Woods on his mother Madelyn Woods' congressional campaign. In 1989 DeMaria, Lewis, and Michael Santiago (another Woods campaign worker) agreed to deliver a shipment of drugs from Sebastian Ross, a drug trafficker, but Metro-Dade got wind of the deal and attempted to stop it, shots were fired, Michael was killed, DeMaria carjacked a truck and he and Lewis escaped with the drugs. Ross (who observed it all) then began tracking down DeMaria through Morales, the middleman, and found him holding one half of Ross' shipment, and Ross used a TASER to get Lewis' location out of DeMaria, then was killed (or in Ross' words, "expired") by Ross.