MIAMI – Miami-Dade police have identified the officer critically wounded in a shootout in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood Monday night.
The officer has been identified in a department memo as 29-year-old Detective Cesar “Echy” Echaverry, a member of the department’s Robbery Intervention Detail.
The memo described Echaverry’s condition as “extremely critical.” He was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center by a fellow officer following the shooting.
Officers from both MDPD and Miami police gathered in a show of support Monday night.
The series of events leading up to the shootout began with a robbery in Dania Beach. Sources identified the suspect, who was shot and killed by police, as 32-year-old Jeremy Horton, a Michigan native whose last known address was in Georgia.
Echaverry and other Robbery Intervention Detail officers then spotted Horton’s car in the area of Northwest 17th Avenue and 62nd Street, where he soon managed to get away, striking several police cars, officers said. That’s where a Local 10 News crew spotted the vehicle take off before Horton was shot and killed by police just a few blocks away.
6 p.m. Tuesday report:
“Our officers are hurting real bad, but make no mistake that we have our resolve and we’re standing tall for Echy,” MDPD Director Freddy Ramirez said at a news conference Tuesday.
Ramirez and other county officials joined the detective’s family in prayer at JMH.
“I call upon our entire community to uplift him and his family in your prayers,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at the news conference.
Ramirez also corrected “misinformation” put out on the night of the shooting. He said that there were incorrect reports that Echaverry had died.
“He’s not deceased,” he said. “He’s very much with us.”
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the shooting, as is standard procedure.