Shooting of man and woman leads to chaos around two high schools
About an hour and a half before classes started Tuesday morning, a bleeding 27-year-old woman approached a school police officer near Coral Reef High School.
She had been shot in the upper body, police later said, and a man nearby lay shot in a Ford Expedition parked right across the street.
The ensuing investigation — and Miami-Dade police’s search for the shooter — put two magnet high schools on a precautionary lockdown for about an hour as officers traced the shooting from a call for shots in Richmond Heights to the intersection near the schools where the woman flagged down help.
Both lockdowns were lifted, but police are still searching for the suspect, they said.
Police first received a call of shots fired in the area around 6:15 a.m. near Booker T. Washington and Lincoln boulevards, Miami-Dade police spokesman Sgt. Carlos Rosario said. After officers arrived, police received a second call from the school officer assigned to Coral Reef High School on Southwest 152nd Street, who asked for backup after the wounded woman approached him.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue took her and the 31-year-old man to Jackson Memorial South hospital in stable condition, and police officers shut down 100th to 104th avenues between 152nd and 153rd streets to investigate.
Coral Reef and BioTECH at Richmond Heights High School, located across the street, both issued precautionary code yellow lockdowns after the school system was alerted to police activity around 7 a.m., Miami-Dade Public Schools spokeswoman Daisy Gonzalez-Diego said.
Though the lockdowns were lifted around 8:30 a.m., the morning drama created chaos around the neighborhood as thousands of students were starting their school day.
Parents who were trying to drop off kids at school were told to drop their students off outside the parking lots, and students who wanted to park inside were required to show their IDs before being allowed in. Police remained stationed outside the schools through Tuesday morning, with officers minding caution tape along a busy 153rd Street.
In an email to parents, Coral Reef Principal Thomas Ennis said the school was put on lockdown “as a precaution and to ensure the safety of our students.”
“All students are safely being instructed in their classrooms under the supervision of their teachers,” he wrote. “There is no current threat to any student in the school.”
Police are still investigating the origin of the shooting scene, they said in a statement. Officers remained on site near the schools and at the original location of shots fired in southwest Richmond Heights.
This story was originally published September 26, 2017 at 1:18 PM with the headline "Shooting of man and woman leads to chaos around two high schools."