MIAMI – Detectives are searching on Monday for two shooters who left eight injured — two teenage boys and six men — at a public park’s basketball court in Miami-Dade County.
Two male shooters walked up to the basketball court and targeted the group at about 7:10 p.m. on Sunday, at the Little River Park, 10525 NW 25 Ave., in Miami-Dade’s West Little River neighborhood.
“There were adults, children, families, trying to share and trying to have a good time at a park on a Sunday before returning to school on Monday,” Detective Angel Rodriguez said Sunday night.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue personnel found two teenage boys, ages 16 and 17, and six men, ages 18 to 27, injured. Fire Rescue airlifted the 16-year-old boy to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center.
Andrea Ferbee said like many in the neighborhood she frequently plays basketball at Little River Park, but she was working on Sunday night. She lives closeby, so her mother heard the shooting and has now forbidden her from playing there again.
“I feel like my world ended ... this is my sacred place,” Ferbee, 21, said. “I’m a basketball player so the court is every basketball player’s place to make peace for themselves and that has been taken away from me.”
According to Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade Police Department, six of the eight victims were in critical condition and the two others were in stable condition.
“They don’t think about how they’re affecting everyone else when they’re doing the things that they do that’s making them feel good for the moment and that’s what we have to stop,” Ferbee said.
Two hours after the basketball court shooting, detectives were responding to another mass shooting five miles south of the Little River Park.
Six people were injured outside of the District 3 Night Club & Liquors, also known as Club Boi, at 728 NW 79th St., in Miami-Dade’s Gladeview area. The two shootings left emergency doctors and nurses to deal with 14 shooting victims on the same night during the coronavirus pandemic.
Rodriguez is asking anyone with information about the shooters to call Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8577.