Miami-Dade Cop Forced To Fire
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – A Miami-Dade police officer was forced to fire after the driver of an SUV rammed her patrol car.
The officer was called to a warehouse area in the 3500 block of NW 79th Street after someone called about a burglary. When the officer arrived she spotted the two burglary suspects in a gray Isuzu Rodeo.
When the officer approached the vehicle, she ordered both people to slow get out, according to Miami-Dade police spokeswoman Aida Fina-Milan. The person on the passenger side jumped out and took off on foot.
The driver, however, remained in the vehicle. It was when he began to drive toward the officer is when she pulled her gun and fired in self-defense. The SUV hit the officer's patrol car before it took off.
The officer followed him to 79th Street and 32nd Avenue where she found he had slammed into another car. Ali Valle saw the crash.
"I saw the Isuzu cut the red light, they cut the red light, he nicked one other car but he smashed into a white car that the old man was driving," said Valle.
Valle said he ran to the injured man and tried to help.
"As time went on, he really wasn't responsive at all, he was non-responsive and I kept trying to speak to him, trying to ask his name," Valle said. "I kept telling him not move and he kept doing it. So I think he was pretty out of it."
That man was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital in critical condition.
Valle said after the crash, the driver seemed stunned.
"He walked out, looked at the scene and was 'oh my God', that's what I took from it. Then he ran back and then after that he was lost, I just saw him run back to the car (Isuzu), drop something off, get something, I don't know, I saw him duck and that was it," said Valle. "He disappeared."
Fina-Milan said officers caught up with him a short time later a few blocks away at a mobile home park. He was taken to the hospital where he's being treated for a gunshot to the abdomen. He is in critical condition.
