Authorities are investigating after police shot an armed man who fled from officers Wednesday in the Miami-Dade neighborhood of Brownsville.
According to Miami-Dade Police, it was just before 6:50 p.m. when officers spotted a car that committed a traffic infraction and activated their lights to conduct a traffic stop. Instead of stopping, the driver fled.
As he fled police, the driver lost control and hit a parked vehicle and fence on Northwest 24th Avenue and 50th Street, police said. He then got out of the vehicle and ran away.
The man was allegedly armed as he ran across a park where kids were playing, police said.
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Witnesses said everything happened so quickly. Jeffrey Owens recorded the shooting on his cellphone.
“Soon as I heard, 'hey, get down,' I saw it, witnessed it,” Owens said.
He and several kids were at the park on Northwest 24th Avenue and 50th Street when they saw the man running.
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“They were telling him, 'get down, get down, get down,'" Owens said. “I got the kids to safety out of the way, I let them do their job."
The video shows a man running as police tell him to drop a gun. Gunshots are fired, and the man collapses on the ground and screams in pain. After the shooting, police yell at the man again to drop the gun.
“I saw the weapon in his hand, I could see the weapon in his hand, I saw it,” Owens said.
Police said the man was taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center in critical condition. His identity wasn't released.
It's unclear how many shots were fired and how many times he was shot. No one else was injured.
Police also recovered one gun at the scene.
Miami-Dade Police spokesman Alvaro Zabaleta said it was an extremely dangerous situation as the gunman ran through the park.
"At the end of the day you have an individual that's fleeing from officers with a firearm in their hand. You don't know what that person's intentions are at the time, you don't know what he plans to have his actions to be," Zabaleta said. "And when you of course see him running through a park where you are visually seeing children playing, that's something that clearly is of concern and so it is a dangerous situation."
Owens is thankful he and everyone else around him walked away unharmed.
“As long as the kids were safe, made sure everyone was protected and safe was my goal,” Owens said.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the shooting.
