Teen shot by cop after raising loaded weapon in his direction, police say

The initial call wasn’t out of the ordinary: Someone heard gunfire in a Northwest Miami-Dade neighborhood Monday afternoon and requested police to respond.

But the next few minutes turned to mayhem, with cops chasing three teenagers through front yards, over railroad tracks and down streets, before apprehending two of them who had loaded, stolen weapons, police said.

One of the teens was shot in the leg by a Miami-Dade officer who said the juvenile retrieved the weapon from his waistband and raised it in the officer’s direction, before he was shot. The teen was recovering in the hospital Tuesday with non-life-threatening injuries. None of the cops were hurt, police said.

What wasn’t clear Tuesday, a day after the chase and shooting: Why the teens were running from the cops in the first place.

“That’s still under investigation,” Miami-Dade Police Sgt. Carlos Rosario said Monday at the scene of the shooting.

Two of the teens were arrested and a third was released.

Dedrick Willis Lawrence, 16, who was shot in the leg, was arrested and charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, carrying a concealed firearm, grand theft, and possession of a firearm by a minor. And Joe Everett Grace, 15, was arrested and charged with carrying a concealed firearm, grand theft and possession of a firearm by a minor. Joe Grace was booked into the Juvenile Assessment Center. Dedrick Lawrence was taken to the hospital.

The confrontation between law enforcement and the teens also created some tension in the Brownsville neighborhood where the shooting took place. A small faction of residents there disputed the police version of events. The group denied any shots were fired other than from the officers. At one point, Rosario was forced to call in reinforcements to separate the residents from the media who were listening to police.

One woman showed a video she had taken on her cellphone. In it, gunfire could be heard and it showed an officer arriving at the scene, exiting his vehicle and chasing after one of the teens who had wheeled away on his bicycle. The woman wouldn’t give her name or share the video.

Police said the incident began just after 2 p.m. Monday while they were responding to a call about shots fired in the area of Northwest 72nd Street and 19th Avenue. When Miami-Dade detectives from the Robbery Intervention Detail arrived to help, they spotted the three teens taking off, police said.

Officers said Dedrick Lawrence was on a bicycle at first, but then ditched it and ran. As they neared him in their unmarked vehicle, police said Dedrick raised his weapon.

Two officers fired at him, one striking him in the leg. They said they recovered a Glock-17, 9 mm semi-automatic filled with 27 cartridges. A check of the serial number revealed the weapon had been stolen in late December.

While that was happening, other officers spotted two other teens who were blocked from crossing the railroad tracks because a train was passing. Police took Joe Grace into custody, they said, in the front yard of a home while he was trying to run away. Police said they found a loaded firearm on him as they patted him down. The third teen was released.

The officers involved in the shooting hadn’t been identified by Tuesday. WPLG Channel 10 said the mother of the two teens arrested appeared at their initial court hearing Tuesday. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the shooting.

This story was originally published January 29, 2019 at 11:49 AM.