Police looking for suspect after shooting of elderly man in Hialeah
MIAMI – Police are looking for a suspect in the Friday morning shooting of an elderly man in Hialeah.
Officials said the victim, who was homeless and whose identity has not been made public, was a man in his 70s. Hialeah Fire and Rescue transported him to Jackson Ryder Trauma Center in critical condition.
The shooting took place in front of a jewelry store in a shopping plaza at Palm Avenue and West 12th Street.
Video footage from an apartment complex showed a black Mustang making a U-turn and pulling onto a sidewalk in front of an apartment complex at 1:30 a.m. A man casually walked over to the shopping plaza right next door where an unhoused man was hanging out. Then a gunshot rang out.
A woman, Judy Rodriguez, walked by the scene around 3 a.m. and found the man injured.
"I just see him. I just saw the blood all over the floor," she said. "So I ran all the way cuz I don't have a phone, all the way to the gas station and I call 911."
Rodriguez said there were other people around who did not help the victim.
"I was so scared," Rodriguez said. "And then I say like, 'Please give me the phone. I need you to call 911. There's a guy on the floor bleeding. And I just want to help him.'"
"I thought he was dead," she said. "And when they came here, I see him moving."
The owner of the jewelry store in the shopping plaza confirmed the man in the apartment complex footage is the same man he saw shooting the victim in his surveillance video.
Police asked him not to share his footage. But the owner said he recognized the shooter as someone who lives in the area.
The shooting investigation is in its early stages. Hialeah police say it appears to be an isolated incident.