Fourth police pursuit in 12 days ends with 3 suspects caught, one loose in Florida City
A wild police chase that began with a shooting in Florida City, followed moments later by reports of another shooting on Florida’s Turnpike, ended back in Florida City after three men who bailed from the vehicle were taken into custody.
A fourth managed to elude officers and remained at large Tuesday evening.
That suspect, police believe, is someone who has been just out of their grasp for quite some time. According to a law enforcement source, police radio transmissions described the main target in the white Dodge Charger police were tailing on the turnpike as Dennis “Fat Cat” Shelby, a 19-year-old who survived a Homestead shooting a few months ago.
Homestead police spokesman Fernando Morales couldn’t confirm the report Tuesday afternoon, saying only that Shelby was not one of the three men taken into custody.
Police believe Shelby was the intended target in the 2015 shooting death of 17-year-old Noricia Talabert, a Homestead teen headed to the University of Central Florida who had just eaten at Applebee’s and was driving two friends home when she was shot to death. A teen named Christopher Walker was later arrested in the shooting, but Miami-Dade prosecutors dropped the charges after the main witness refused to cooperate.
Shelby was later arrested in connection with the shooting deaths of two teens in South Miami-Dade who were killed the day after Noricia died. It was a suspected retaliation shooting. That case too, was dropped by prosecutors. Then, a few months ago, Shelby survived a shooting in Homestead. No arrest in that case has been made.
Morales, the Homestead spokesman, said police were already at Baptist Hospital investigating a shooting when the Tuesday morning chase began. While there, they got a call about another shooting just north of the Campbell Drive ramp to the turnpike. He said Homestead and Miami-Dade police picked up the white Charger just as it jumped onto the Turnpike at Palm Drive in Florida City.
Police had not released any information on the two shootings Tuesday evening.
The vehicle, which a source said was being driven by a known associate of Shelby, who was in the backseat behind the driver, sped north all the way to 216th Street in Cutler Bay. With police following, it got off the highway, then circled back onto the ramp heading back south on the turnpike. Back at Palm Drive, Morales said, the Charger headed west to Fifth Avenue, then north before the four men bailed in the 1100 block.
Along the way, a rifle believed to be an AR-15 was tossed from the vehicle onto the turnpike, a source said.
With Miami-Dade and a U.S. Customs helicopter circling overhead and dozens of Miami-Dade and Homestead officers in pursuit, three of the men were captured after a brief foot chase. The fourth, suspected to be Shelby, had not been captured by the evening.
Tuesday’s chase is at least the fourth multi-agency police pursuit in the last 12 days in South Florida, resulting in four deaths.
The first was on Dec. 5, when four people were killed, including a hostage and an innocent bystander during a rush-hour shootout with police on Miramar Parkway and Flamingo Road. The police chase began in Coral Gables after two men suspected of robbing a jewelry store hijacked a UPS truck and were chased 23 miles to Miramar. The truck driver, who had been taken hostage, a man trapped in a car at the intersection and the two suspected robbers were killed during the gunfire.
Then on Dec. 8, Hallandale Beach police shot a man in his vehicle after they said he refused to stop after making an illegal turn and a passenger waved a gun out of vehicle. The chase ended in Hollywood near the City Hall traffic circle, east of I-95. The driver, who police said was carrying an AR-15, was hit with two of 12 shots fired by an officer.
And a little over a week later on Dec. 16, Hallandale Beach police chased a naked man who had stolen a car south to Miami-Dade’s Golden Beach. Police said an officer opened fire after the man struck the cop with his vehicle. No one was injured.
This story was originally published December 17, 2019 at 1:22 PM.
