Woman shot dead by Miami-Dade police during eviction at Brickell apartment, cops say
This story has been updated to include the identity of the woman who was killed during a confrontation with Miami-Dade police.
A woman was shot and killed Tuesday afternoon by Miami-Dade police officers after she fired on them while they served an eviction at a Brickell high-rise apartment building, the agency said.
Officers were serving the eviction at a unit on the 22nd story of the Brickell 1st building, when the woman opened fire on officers from the Eviction Squatter Task Force, a new unit created to deal with the tremendous backlog of evictions stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.
The woman had earlier made threats, police said, and officers entered the unit armed with Kevlar shields, which repelled at least one of her shots. No officers were hurt.
“The subject fired at us and officers returned fire. It’s just an unfortunate outcome that she fired on my officers,” Miami-Dade Police Director Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez said. “It hit their shields.”
Ramirez said there was “some dialogue” before the woman opened fire on the officers, who returned fire and killed her. The director said officers were forced to breach the entrance of the apartment, before the gunfire erupted.
The shooting happened at the luxury rental apartment building at 110 SW 12th St. It’s a mostly residential neighborhood of condominiums just south of downtown Miami, and a couple of blocks west of Brickell Avenue.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is now investigating the fatal shooting. Miami-Dade police on Wednesday afternoon identified the woman as 40-year-old Stephanie Voikin.
“It’s tragic, but you can’t be shooting at police officers,” South Florida Police Benevolent Association President Steadman Stahl said.
Records show an eviction had been filed against Voikin from her time staying on the building’s 22nd story. Reached by phone, the lawyer who filed the eviction last month said a building manager “told me she was violent.”
Public records show that Voikin had a history of legal troubles.
In April 2020, a Miami doctor filed for a restraining order against her, claiming she was stalking him after they’d broken up. They’d only dated one month. He said Voikin had a drug and alcohol problem.
The doctor claimed Voikin harassed and stalked him for three weeks until he blocked all of her communications. In his complaint, he wrote that she was “obsessed with him” and that she “threatened to cause havoc” in his life. He also claimed that somebody on Facebook sent him a message that Voikin was mentally ill and that his life was in “grave danger.”
The doctor said he filed a report with the State Attorney’s Office. A temporary restraining order was later dismissed after he failed to show for a hearing in September.
Records show that in Palm Beach County, Voikin was involved in at least four civil domestic violence cases with four different men since 2007.
Voikin was also arrested in January 2019 after a man she met at a bar told police she refused to leave his room at the Surfcomber Hotel in Miami Beach. But he called police after “she began to yell and act unusual” — and at one point threatened to commit suicide by taking pills, according to a police report.
She was arrested for resisting police after she began acting unruly with officers. Voikin wound up paying a fine, and was ordered to stay away from the hotel, court records show.
Late last month Miami-Dade police formed the Eviction Squatter Task Force to help process the tremendous backlog of evictions and other court-ordered actions that had been put on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Miami-Dade police “reallocated” 16 officers to the department’s Court Services Bureau, which normally handles evictions, the mayor’s office said last month.
Facing court challenges, Miami-Dade County has begun processing evictions filed during the COVID-19 pandemic but said it planned to delay evicting the most vulnerable tenants. Landlords had gone to court after a yearlong effort under two mayors to largely freeze the evictions process during the pandemic.
Since March 2020, more than 10,000 evictions were filed in Miami-Dade County courts, and so far, nearly 4,000 of those are pending in the system, according to the clerk’s office.
“That’s why we created the task force, the sheer number of evictions that are going on right now,” Ramirez said. “Plus, the desperation of the community. For the people in these residences, it’s a very touchy situation, a very dangerous situation for our officers. We take all the proper precautions to insure safety, but, unfortunately, this is one of those scenarios that we always worry about. But our officers were prepared and trained.
Miami Herald staff writer David J. Neal contributed to this report.
This story was originally published April 6, 2021 at 1:33 PM.
