Killing on Miami bus, one of 3 shootings involving a single suspect, caught on video
In the past few years, wherever Malik Horton has gone, police records in Miami and Georgia suggest a trail of bullets and death has followed.
He’s a “person of interest” in the shooting death of a man who was waiting to pick up his children two years ago at an apartment complex in a small town outside Atlanta, Union City police said.
Last September, according to Atlanta police, Horton pulled the trigger during a gun battle between rival groups in separate vehicles.
And in October while Horton was in Miami, police say, he shot and killed a man on a Miami-Dade transit bus at an Allapattah bus stop. Though police had eyewitnesses and surveillance video and were able to identify Horton, he left town before they could take him into custody.
Miami detectives caught up with Horton in jail last week and charged him with a single count of second-degree murder. The 21-year-old had been taken into custody by Atlanta police on weapons charges from the September shooting incident.
“We still don’t know the motive yet,” Miami police Detective Kenia Fallat said of the fatal October bus stop shooting. “But it’s very sad to see someone so cold-blooded pick a fight with someone on a bus like that.”
Now Miami police and the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s office’s Extradition Unit are working with Georgia officials to extradite Horton to Florida. It could also be complicated because detectives in Union City — a small town about 20 miles from Atlanta with about 20,000 residents — also want Horton. They didn’t know Horton had been taken into custody until being told during a recent phone call.
An ESPN website shows Horton played high school football in Fairburn, Ga., just outside of Atlanta as recently as 2017. And a Maryland football website claims the three-star recruit was offered a scholarship to play for the University of Maryland in the fall of that year. It wasn’t clear if Horton ever enrolled at the university.
In the Miami case, the most recent shooting incident that police are aware of, Horton is suspected of firing his weapon from inside a white backpack and killing a man at an Allapattah bus stop. The man, the warrant said, fell out of the bus and was found dead on the sidewalk next to it. A police officer said the dead man’s feet were still in the bus and his body on the ground when police arrived.
According to Horton’s arrest warrant, a witness said when a man named Brandon Lamar Bennett, 23, climbed aboard the bus at Northwest 30th Avenue and 36th Street, Horton became angered and told Bennett to “stop looking at me,” before making his way over to him in the rear of the bus. When Bennett pulled the cord and got up to leave, Horton followed him. Then, the warrant says, a flash from the gunshot can be seen on the surveillance video before Bennett falls to the ground.
It’s not clear if the two men knew each other. Detectives, with the help of an informant, eventually found a woman linked to Horton at a hotel along Biscayne Boulevard in the northern end of the city. The warrant says she told police that Horton said he had a semi-automatic pistol, that he shot and killed a man and that he’d harm her if she told anyone.
But by then, Horton was gone. Their search led them to Atlanta, where Horton had been in custody since Nov. 13 on weapons charges from the September shooting. In that incident, Atlanta police allege Horton fired his weapon at another vehicle during a shootout between groups. Police said no one was injured during the encounter.
An officer learned of it, according to Atlanta police records, when he saw a car pass him with a shattered back window and four or five males inside. He followed the car into an apartment complex, according to the incident report, then backed off and waited for help to arrive. By the time police found the car, it was empty. Forensics eventually led them to Horton.
A witness told Atlanta police that a blue Nissan with the men in it pulled up outside her home and that they got out and someone started firing a weapon. One of the bullets went through a window and into her apartment. Another ricocheted into a neighbor’s apartment and hit his Roku television.
Last month, Atlanta police got a tip and were waiting for Horton as a car he was in pulled up to a woman’s apartment. Police called his name and Horton got out of the car with “his hands in the air and surrendered peacefully,” Atlanta police officer Mason Mercure said in the arrest report. Horton was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a firearm during a felony and with being a fugitive. Fulton county jail records show he remained locked up there on Friday.
Also, still looking for Horton are detectives from the Union City police department. That’s where police believe Horton’s recent shooting spree began.
Police there said they would like to speak to Horton about the Thanksgiving 2018 weekend shooting death of Christopher Kindle, 30. He was waiting for his two children in the parking lot of the Shannon Lakes apartment complex when he was gunned down. There were so many bullets that several vehicles in the parking lot were pock-marked with holes, local news reports said. It wasn’t until July of 2019 that Union City police identified Horton as a “person of interest” in the murder. They didn’t say why it took so long.
“I guess we can start the paperwork for extradition,” a Union City law enforcement officer who didn’t give his name said this week.
By late Friday afternoon the Union City detective on the case hadn’t returned a phone call to the Miami Herald.
Alex Piquero, who chairs the sociology department at the University of Miami, said Horton is a danger mostly because of the randomness of the crimes he is suspected of committing. There doesn’t seem to be any type of pattern, said the sociology professor.
“Most homicides are drug deals gone bad, or something like that. This is not normal. They seem to be random events,” said Piquero. “The motive of this guy doesn’t make much sense at all. You can’t predict it. You don’t know how many more shootings he may have done.”
This story was originally published December 14, 2020 at 9:26 AM.
