OPA-LOCKA, Fla. – Lorenzo Shine is known in the streets of northern Miami-Dade County as “Du Du” or “Blaze” and over the years his reputation in Opa-locka also earned him the street moniker “Shine Murda,” records show.
At 30 years old, detectives in Opa-locka have already come to know Shine as a gang member who has wasted years of his life in Florida jails and prisons, records show. Under the threat of spending many more behind bars, he was at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on Saturday held without bond.
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It took detectives from the Miami Gardens, Opa-locka, and Hollywood police departments to put him there, records show. He was facing seven charges: Prosecutors filed a new case on Thursday with two charges after a Miami-Gardens police arrest and a new case on Friday with five charges for an Opa-locka shooting.
Shine’s Florida Department of Corrections file had a promise: Had he stayed out of trouble, his probation would have ended in 2027. But detectives reported he returned to Opa-locka — where for decades gang feuds have erupted into fusillades of bullets time and time again.
Before Shine was even born, Opa-locka’s Wall gang was already fighting turf wars. He was 5 when the feds arrested a man known as the “Mayor of Opa-locka” because he was the city’s main heroin and cocaine supplier.
Shine was a teen when the feds caught 33 alleged members of the Young and Holsey gangs. He was 18 when Miami-Dade police officers arrested him for burglary, and grand theft of a vehicle, records show.
Even some of the city of employees got caught up in crime. Shine was 19 when the feds accused a police captain of being a Back Blues gang member, and the feds would later find public corruption ran deep there.
Just before his 21st birthday, Shine was arrested again for armed burglary and robbery, and before his conviction, he got arrested for another armed burglary and a probation violation, records show. He remained in a Florida prison until June 16, 2018, but it didn’t take long for him to make headlines when he was involved in a drive-by shooting that changed the lives of two football players.
Shine confessed to his involvement in the Opa-locka drive-by shooting that injured Florida International University’s Mershawn Miller, an offensive guard, and Anthony Jones, a running back, records show. Both athletes survived and the NFL went on to refer to the case as the “Miami Miracle.”
Shine went back to prison in 2019 until corrections freed him last year, and a probation violation turned him into a fugitive, records show. The 6-foot, 2-inch tall convicted felon was injured when an argument escalated into a shootout that police say put others’ lives at risk, records show.
A confidential informant and surveillance videos at the crime scene and at Memorial Hospital in Hollywood helped detectives to identify Shine as a suspect, records show. Police officers arrested him on Tuesday and he was facing charges of third-degree grand theft and resisting arrest for the Miami-Gardens case, records show.
For the Opa-locka shooting, police officers rearrested Shine on Wednesday at TGK and he was facing two counts of attempted first-degree murder with a deadly weapon, using a firearm while committing a felony, possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, and discharging a firearm in public.
Shine’s arraignment hearing is set at 9:30 a.m., on June 7, before Miami-Dade Circuit Juge Zachary James, who is presiding over both of the pending cases.
Read the arrest form in the new Opa-locka case