Driver didn’t mean to hit officer outside Miami music festival, sister says
Details about an officer-involved shooting remained scant Monday, but the 21-year-old man who was shot by a Miami police officer outside of Bayfront Park on Sunday is expected to survive, according to his lawyer.
Hollywood attorney Michael Orenstein said his client, Menelek Emmanuel Clarke, was recovering at Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center, though he had not had the chance to speak directly with Clarke about the incident as of Monday evening.
“I don’t know much about details at all yet,” he said.
The Miami Police Department said Sunday that a 21-year-old driver hit an officer who was directing traffic outside of Bayfront Park, where the Caribbean music festival Best of the Best was taking place. The officer then shot the driver, and the 21-year-old was hospitalized with multiple gunshot wounds.
READ MORE: Police officer shot driver outside music festival in Miami’s Bayfront Park: officials
A Miami Police Department spokesperson said Monday that “no further details will be provided as this remains an ongoing investigation” by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. It is unclear if the driver will face any charges.
Orenstein is representing Clarke in an unrelated case in Broward County, where Clarke was charged with aggravated assault on an officer, resisting an officer with violence and armed trespassing. The charges stem from an incident in October 2023 in which Broward deputies said Clarke, then 19, brandished a gun after being told by a deputy to leave a Lauderhill park. Clarke has pleaded not guilty.
Clarke’s sister Sherylann Clarke told Miami Herald news partner CBS Miami that she was in the car with her brother on Sunday and that her brother was trying to drive around the Miami police officer, not toward him. She said the officer had signaled with his hands that drivers in the area should pull forward but that the officer had then moved in front of their car.
“It wasn’t intentional to hit him, no,” she told CBS Miami.
The incident caused festivalgoers to run for safety before it became clear what happened. Photographer Kemal Limon told the Herald he was leaving Bayside Marketplace that night when he saw a large crowd of people running away from Bayfront Park.
“I was walking by and saw people running,” he said. “It was like chaos.”
Limon noticed people stopped running once more police cars arrived, as there didn’t seem to be an active threat.
As a downtown Miami resident, Limon said he is prepared to see anything.
“This is Miami,” he said. “Anything can happen. I wasn’t surprised.”
An employee at the nearby Yve Hotel told the Herald that many of its guests were staying there to attend the festival across the street. While he didn’t hear the shooting, he saw the high amount of police activity that followed. It wasn’t until Monday that he learned from the news what had happened.
City editor Jessica Lipscomb contributed reporting.
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