Miami Gardens Cops Clam Up On Police Shooting
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – It was fast and furious. A man took harrowing flight Monday from multiple agencies, doing 100 mph at times and executing hugely dangerous maneuvers – going the wrong way down major highways, racing down the shoulder of roadways, almost losing control.
It ended when the car rammed a Miami Gardens police cruiser and the subject bailed out face down on the pavement.
Aerial video showed the officer fired an apparent gunshot through his windshield, putting a slug in the in the windshield of the offending car.
Antonio Jackson, 24, bonded out of jail overnight on a modest $12,500 bail. He told his mom he first stopped when police pulled him over.
"Why you ain't stop?" Angela Jackson asked her son after he was released from jail. "He said, 'I did stop for Metro Dade, but when all the polices jumped out with the guns, they scared me and I kept going. I drove off.'"
Despite an information blackout from Miami Gardens police, CBS4 News has learned it all began at a Miami Gardens bus stop at NW 191st Street and 27th Avenue where Jackson allegedly made inappropriate advances toward a woman and brandished what she thought was a gun. Not so, says Jackson.
"They said something about he threatened somebody with a gun or something like that, but he told me that wasn't true. That's not true," Jackson's mother quotes him as saying.
Jackson is charged only with fleeing to elude and reckless driving on a suspended license.
Police haven't named the officer who took the shot through two windshields.
On Tuesday, detectives canvassed neighborhoods the chase went through, apparently looking for possible security video that might lead to a discarded gun.
Jackson, through his mother, said he had no gun and police didn't not find one. He has a record of only petty arrests.
Miami Gardens officials have refused to discuss any details of Monday's alleged bus stop assault, or the ensuing chase that ended with a crash and gunfire. Without explanation, the department has refused to name the officer who fired his weapon, and thus far has refused to say how long the officer was on the force, or provide his or her personnel jacket.
Left hanging is the question why Jackson has been charged only with relatively minor fleeing and reckless driving offenses, given the violent collision and gunshot marked conclusion to Monday's chase.
