Three shot at local beach: Dozens of police officers on hand as gunfire erupts
By Robert Napper
The Bradenton Herald, Fla.
BRADENTON BEACH, Fla. -A brazen gang shooting less than 100 yards from dozens of law enforcement officers set off a violent Easter Sunday that cleared out a popular Manatee Beach.
Just before 4:30 p.m., Bradenton Beach police Sgt. Charles Sloan said investigators believe gang members shot three people, leaving them in critical condition Sunday.
An hour after the shooting, an eerily empty Coquina Beach was in stark contrast to the wild scene earlier that turned a quiet Easter Sunday into bedlam at the beach.
Sloan said about 10,000 people had packed the Coquina Beach area, many of them are considered to be gang members. It is an annual gathering that often turns violent, Sloan said.
This year, authorities were expecting trouble because tension between local gangs has been at a fever pitch since a 23-year-old man was gunned down in broad daylight two Sundays ago.
A teen believed to be a member of the SUR 13 gang has been charged with murder in that shooting. Local law enforcement has been bracing for retaliation for that shooting since it happened.
On Sunday, 50 deputies, officers from local agencies and some from as far as Fort Meade were on patrol as a show of force -- but not with the results officials had hoped for.
“We were hoping intense presence might stop this from happening, but unfortunately it didn’t,” said Sloan.
Things started out peaceful, as deputies filtered through the crowd all day.
But as the afternoon wore on, shots rang out and set off a chaotic scene. Bullets tore into the chest of two adults and a teenager.
One of the victims also suffered a gunshot to the midsection, according to Manatee County Public Safety spokesman Capt. Larry Leinhauser. The victims have not been identified.
Gregory LaSalle was across the street from where the shooting occurred. He said he did not hear shots, but saw one of the wounded men.
“He was holding his arm,” said LaSalle. “It was crazy.”
Another beachgoer, a woman, said she didn’t hear the shots either, but it wasn’t hard to realize quickly that something was wrong.
“It was like an army of police running over there,” she said.
After the shooting, police closed Gulf Drive, snarling traffic for blocks, as three helicopters landed to transport the wounded to Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg.
“They are all critically wounded,” said Sloan.
Sloan said police closed the road in order to funnel out the thousands of people on Coquina Beach.
“When you have that many people, there is concern that a riot could break out with tempers flaring,” Sloan said.
Police taped off a wooded picnic area on the beach, keeping about a half-dozen witnesses in the crime scene to find out what happened.
Some said people were flashing gang signs right before the shooting occurred.
Several people are in custody as “persons of interest,” but Sloan declined to say how many and if charges are pending. Police had a young man and woman handcuffed at the scene.
Sloan said gang violence on holidays, and every Easter, has plagued Bradenton Beach for years
“I have been here for 13 years and we have been battling this for as long as I have been here,” he said.
Sloan declined to name the gangs believed to be involved in Sunday’s shooting, because more retaliation is certainly possible.
“I don’t want to inflame this situation any more than it already is,” he said.
Sunday has been a bloody day in Manatee in the past few months. A shooting death Sunday in a local restaurant parking lot marked the fifth slaying on a Sunday, since January.
On Jan. 6, a 37-year-old man was gunned down in an attempted robbery in Bradenton.
Two weeks later, deputies found two men shot to death in a vehicle outside a Mexican restaurant in Oneco. Both cases remain unsolved.
Copyright 2007 The Bradenton Herald