Ex-chef who killed Miami-Dade man while fleeing crash now accused of 2 more hit-and-runs

AVENTURA, Fla. — Jonathan Eismann, once a well-known chef in South Florida, avoided prison time in 2019 for killing a pedestrian after a hit-and-run crash almost seven years prior.

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Now, the 65-year-old is back in legal trouble after Aventura police said he committed two more hit-and-runs on Biscayne Boulevard on Monday. This time, no one was seriously hurt.

Investigators said the latest crashes happened just before 4:30 p.m. near Northeast 203rd Street.

Aventura police said Eismann, of Miami Beach, was driving a black 2020 Ford Escape when he first hit a red BMW, pushing it into the rear of a GMC, and kept driving.

According to an arrest report, as he approached the 203rd Street intersection while fleeing the first crash, “he drove onto the center median in order to pass stopped traffic” and sideswiped a Nissan Rogue with two people inside and took off yet again. Police said the victims followed Eismann to the Aventura Mall, where officers took him into custody.

Both victims suffered minor injuries, according to the report, and officers arrested Eismann on two felony charges of leaving the scene of a crash causing no serious injury.

Eismann, who was known as the owner of the Pacific Time restaurant on Lincoln Road, made headlines in 2012 for a crash in the 300 block of Northwest 72nd Avenue in west Miami-Dade.

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Officers with what was then the Miami-Dade Police Department arrested Eismann, then 51, after they said he struck and killed Jean Carlos Ruiz, 29, as he waited for a bus to work about a block away from his home on Oct. 10, 2012.

Eismann, police said, had been fleeing the scene of another crash when he lost control and jumped the curb.

On Sept. 17, 2019, after making a deal with prosecutors, the 58-year-old pleaded guilty to careless driving involving death and and leaving the scene of a crash involving injury, getting a year of probation.

Ruiz’s widow told Local 10 News at the time that she felt “betrayed” by the justice system.

Years later, Eismann again finds himself in that very same system for more alleged misdeeds behind the wheel. As of Tuesday morning, records show he was being held in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $5,000 bond.

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