MIAMI – Police arrested a man on four attempted murder charges Thursday in connection with a drive-by shooting in Miami’s Omni neighborhood that injured three people earlier in the week.
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Joan Bernardo Quevedo Valdes, 21, of southwest Miami-Dade, is also facing a charge of accessory after the fact. Miami police had also been seeking him in connection with a January group beating at a park elsewhere in the city.
The shooting happened just before 9:45 p.m. Tuesday.
Authorities said the gunman fired about 14 rounds from an Alfa Romeo sedan at a group of four people in a parking lot outside BOXR Gym at 1310 NE First Ave.
The victim who wasn’t wounded told police that he was “not aware of any individuals who would want to cause harm to him or the other victims who were with him at the time of the incident,” a Miami Police Department arrest report states.
Police said they were able to track down the sedan to Quevedo Valdes’ home in the 8800 block of Southwest 50th Terrace thanks to information from an automated license plate reader in the Overtown neighborhood.
The report states that his mother came out and said her son was the primary driver of the vehicle. Police said they took Quevedo Valdes in for questioning and took the vehicle for forensic processing; they said he made a confession.
According to an additional report, Miami police also questioned Quevedo Valdes about a Jan. 13 beating at Curtis Park Marina in the city’s Allapattah neighborhood.
Police said the victim reported getting “punched, kicked and pistol-whipped” by a group of men at the park, located at 2350 NW North River Drive, and identified Quevedo Valdes as one of the suspects responsible from his Instagram account.
Two other people were held at gunpoint during the beating, police said.
The victim told investigators “he believed the reason he was attacked was because of an incident that occurred a few months ago at his school with one of the offender’s girlfriends,” the arrest report states.
Police arrested at least one of the other suspects in the incident. Convicted felon Neysser Poey Gomez, 21, of Homestead, is facing multiple felony charges following his Jan. 23 arrest.
When questioned about the Allapattah incident Tuesday, Quevedo Valdes told detectives he was aware of what happened but denied being there, the arrest report states.
Quevedo Valdes said “he does not own a firearm and only uses BB guns while filming his music videos,” which he said he buys “on Amazon,” according to police.
“(He) also stated his BB gun recently broke and no longer has it,” the report states.
Quevedo Valdes is facing a total of nine felonies in connection with both incidents. As of Friday afternoon, he was being held without bond in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.