Two young children are safe and ten suspects are in custody after an hours-long standoff at a Northwest Miami-Dade home early Wednesday.
The incident began when someone fired shots near Northwest 62nd Street and 19th Avenue around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, Miami-Dade Police spokesman Alvaro Zabaleta said.
One witness said he heard as many as 30 shots.
When officers arrived at the home in the 6300 block of Northwest 19th Avenue, they spotted people in the front yard with weapons, Zabaleta said. One person appeared to have a high-powered rifle.
The suspects ran inside the home and barricaded themselves for nearly five hours as more officers and a SWAT team was brought in.
Zabaleta said negotiators convinced people inside to let out the two children, a 3-year-old and 3-month-old, with an adult.
They later fired tear gas inside the home and took ten people into custody without any injuries shortly after 4 a.m.
The suspects haven't been identified.
Chiaresh Sweat says her five brothers and sister live at the house where the standoff happened. She says she was at the house last night, and that police are wrong about the shooting. Sweat says it did not happen at her family's home.
"Whoever they was looking for... they was basically just trying to put it on them because they couldn't find who they was looking for," she said. "We heard the shooting."
She said the three-year-old is her niece, and the three-month-old boy is her nephew.
