MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Miami-Dade police arrested a 42-year-old man on an attempted murder charge Monday, a little more than three years to the day after they say he walked into a food store with an AK-47, triggering a shootout that left customers ducking for cover.
According to police, at just after 6:15 a.m. on April 20, 2020, a masked Travis Vincent Williams walked into the LT Food Market, located at 4330 NW 27th Ave. in the Brownsville area.
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Toting the rifle, Williams got into an “exchange of words” with another man, who was carrying a pistol, fired first in self-defense, according to a police report.
Police wrote that Williams, who lives in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood, “fired wantonly into the store causing considerable damage and the store patrons and clerk to duck in fear for their lives.”
Authorities said Williams then took out a silver handgun and fired rounds at both the victim and the door “in an attempt to shoot out the glass so he could exit.”
The other man, according to the report, suffered a graze wound and “disfigurement” to his scalp.
Police said in the following days, multiple sources identified the suspect as “Yak,” Williams’ street name and someone officers were familiar with.
Investigators said thanks to social media videos, they were able to determine that Williams bought the AK-47 at an Allapattah pawn shop on April 13.
Police said they learned this February that Williams had been arrested in Tampa in June 2020 and said ballistics data from Tampa police matched shell casings found at the food store.
Detectives took Williams into custody Monday, the report states.
According to the report, Williams refused an interview at the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Northside district station.
“If I’m not being arrested, let me go so I can get in my bed,” detectives said Williams told them. “If I am being arrested, take me to jail. I don’t wanna talk.”
Williams did not get to sleep in his bed Monday night and was instead taken to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on charges of attempted murder and improper exhibition of a firearm.
He was being held with no bond as of Tuesday afternoon.
According to court records, Williams had previously been charged with aggravated assault with a firearm in 2007, but prosecutors dropped the case a little more than two years later.
Those records show he’s had numerous other encounters with police.