Why one of the men wounded in a Miami-Dade triple shooting is the only person charged
The first person taken into custody after Sunday morning’s triple shooting outside the Chicagoan Bar in North Miami-Dade told police that he fired the Diamondback rifle in his hands. But the only person arrested and charged was the person hit by the bullets from that rifle.
That’s because, an arrest report says, surveillance video shows 30-year-old Kijuan Sears firing into a crowd of people outside 10702 NW Seventh Ave., hitting two men around 4:40 a.m. Sunday. Sears was hit in the left arm, police say, when the rifle owner fired back in what they said was defense of the crowd from Sears’ gunfire.
Sears sits in Miami-Dade Corrections custody on two counts of attempted murder, one count each of tampering with physical evidence, discharging a firearm in public and perjury by contradictory statements. He was given no bond on the attempted murder counts.
When Miami-Dade police officers got to the Chicagoan Bar, where five people were shot and one person was killed in January, they say they found a man lying across Northwest 107th Street with bullets in his lower back and left leg. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue took him along with Sears to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital. The other man, hit in the left foot, drove himself to North Shore Hospital.
Before leaving, Sears said his only role in the whole mess had been helping to break up a fight. The person who showed up with a Diamondback rifle was taken into custody.
But when detectives checked out the surveillance video Sunday afternoon, the arrest report says, Sears was seen firing into the crowd and the Diamondback owner shooting in response.
