By Nicholas Spangler, Jennifer Lebovich and David Ovalle
The Miami Herald
MIAMI — A Miami-Dade officer was wounded Sunday near North Miami Beach in a midday backyard firefight with a teenage burglar, whom police eventually shot dead.
Officer David Carrero, 27, from the Intracoastal District, suffered bullet wounds to his legs.
Police identified the dead teen as Giovanni Thermidor, a known neighborhood burglar who had just turned 18.
Investigators believe Thermidor opened fire on arriving police officers -- a common occurrence recently in the recent past in South Florida, where a slew of law enforcement officers have been killed or wounded during the past year.
“These are troubled times -- politicians are cutting back on manpower and the streets are getting meaner,” said Miami-Dade police union president John Rivera, who went to the scene.
Captured was Kharl Henry Lebrun, 17, a suspected accomplice.
Thermidor, a former North Miami High student, has been arrested four times since 2005, state records show. He and Lebrun were arrested in March on burglary and robbery charges. Both were arrested again on charges of burglary to an unoccupied dwelling in April. The dramatic scene on a sun-drenched Memorial Day weekend Sunday took place along the 1000 block of Northeast 170th Terrace in an unincorporated “doughnut hole’’ neighborhood surrounded by North Miami Beach.
Young men in a blue 1991 Toyota were surveilling an empty house, drove away but came back, said neighbor Richard Horvitz, 51.
“So that’s when I got the garden clippers and began trimming the bushes to see what they were doing,” said Horvitz, who wrote down their license plate number on a Walgreens receipt.
The suspects parked a block over. About 12:30 p.m., police dispatchers radioed the call: a burglary in progress at a house in the 1000 block of Northeast 169th Terrace, where 14-year-old Alan Arce was inside.
The teen heard a pounding on the door, peeked through the window and saw two men outside. One wore a blue sweater and the other a gray tank top, he said.
He refused to let them in. They ran into his backyard.
Alan dialed 911, went to his bedroom and hid, he told The Miami Herald.
He called his father on the phone: “Papa. We’re getting robbed,” he said.
Officers from Miami-Dade’s Intracoastal District, which patrols the neighborhood, rushed to the scene. A perimeter was set up.
Officer Carrero, wearing his bullet-proof vest, was searching along with K-9 officers. The gun battle began when Thermidor emerged from bushes behind Horvitz’s house a block over, police believe.
The officer was shot several times in the lower body, said Miami-Dade Detective Roy Rutland, a police spokesman.
Witnesses described a wild scene with officers shooting and taking cover behind parked cars. Amah Kromah and pal Daimein Stanback were coming out of a nearby Walgreens.
“We ducked,” Kromah said. “We didn’t want to be hit by a stray bullet. Stanback said they saw officers crouching between cars, firing back. Thermidor was fatally shot by arriving members of Miami-Dade’s Special Response Team. ‘‘They continued firing shots back and forth for a while,” Stanback said. “They didn’t know where they were shooting.”
Aaron Knobel, 12, said the gun battle was “very loud and extremely scary.”
The wounded Carrero was pulled out and airlifted to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital.
Lebrun faces several charges, which could include felony murder. In Florida, someone who commits certain felonies in which someone dies can be held liable for that death.
Police would not say what type of weapon Thermidor carried, but said only the victim opened fire on the officers. It’s unclear whether Lebrun was armed.
A K-9 dog named Rocco helping in the search for the suspects was shot and taken to Hollywood Animal Hospital. The Belgium Malinois was in stable condition late Sunday.
Carrero joined Miami-Dade police in 2001 as a public service aide and later became a patrolman. Rutland said Carrero comes from “a law enforcement family.”
He was honored in 2004 along with other officers for helping rescue two small children from a burning house in the 400 block of Northwest 82nd Street.
Carrero and other officers helped pry the bars off a house and led the children to safety.
“Thankfully our officer is stable and alert and talking with family,” Rutland said. ‘‘We’re all affected when this happens. Unfortunately, it’s happening way too often.”
Sunday’s violent episode comes during a spate of violence toward officers in Florida. During the last year in Miami-Dade, two officers were killed and four wounded.
In September, Officer Jose Somohano was fatally shot and three others wounded during a gun battle in Cutler Ridge. In January, Miami Detective James Walker was killed in a firefight in North Miami Beach.
In March, Miami-Dade Officer Robert Gonzalez was shot and wounded by a prowler in Cutler Ridge.
In 2007, 16 law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty across Florida, including two Broward Sheriff’s deputies.
Copyright 2008 The Miami Herald