She chronicled Miami crime in a different way. See Edna Buchanan's last 1980s stories

Miami Herald

17-03-2025

Edna Buchanan is the Pulitzer prize-winning crime reporter who covered more than 5,000 violent deaths during her 18-year career at the Miami Herald. She won the Pulitzer for general news reporting in 1986. In 2017, she won the Florida Humanities Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing.
Buchanan also has written several novels and nonfiction books, including the best-selling 'The Corpse Had a Familiar Face,' a memoir about her journalism career.
She is famous for the detail in crime stories, and grabbing the reader's attention with the opening lines. When reporting on Gary Robinson, an ex-con who was shot and killed by a security guard at a Church's Chicken restaurant where he was trying to buy some food, she wrote: 'Gary Robinson died hungry.'
Here is a sampling of Buchanan's last daily police stories for the Miami Herald in the late 1980s before she embarked full time as a book author:
Man's death baffles police
Published March 27, 1988
The dead man left a nickel, three pennies and a mystery that baffles Miami Beach police.
'It's a lonely way to die,' detective Paul Scrimshaw said. 'It bothers us.'
Ten days of investigation led detectives to a dead end. They are still unable to identify the child-like man who was apparently retarded, a victim of Down's Syndrome. He was found alone, an apparent suicide, in an oceanfront room on the second floor of a closed and shuttered Miami Beach hotel.
About age 30, he wore extremely strong prescription eyeglasses, a gray wool pinstripe suit and a down jacket. Detectives Scrimshaw and Phil Kromsky believe he came from out of town.
Perhaps, they theorize, he left a cold, Northern city after a parent died. He may have come here to try life on his own. Or he may have come to die.
Speculation is all they have. Leads are few.
Here are the facts. On Wednesday, March 16, just before 9 a.m., somebody dialed 911 from a pay telephone a block and a half away from the closed hotel.
'There's a man hanging in the Jefferson Hotel,' the caller said, and hung up.
Beach police pried open the front door and searched the hotel, at 121 15th St. He was in Room 206. He had been dead for days, after placing a noose around his neck and stepping off a chair. The other end of the rope was attached to an air- conditioning vent.
He had gone shopping before his death. Police have been unable to locate the store where he spent about $6 for three items: a package of Gillette razor blades and two 50-foot lengths of rope. One rope was made of hemp, the other a synthetic clothesline. The prices were still marked in black crayon.
He removed his gray suit, his pale yellow dress shirt and dark tie and placed them on the bed. The first noose apparently broke, so he patiently fashioned a second, intertwining both ropes together.
It did not break.
The dead man wore underwear, black socks and black plain toe Oxfords with a heavy lug sole. He still wore his eyeglasses. The well-worn brown frames were made in Italy.
'He was probably clinically blind,' Scrimshaw said. 'He was extremely nearsighted; the lenses were very thick.'
He stood about five feet, eight inches tall and weighed 180 pounds. His thinning dark hair was cut very short, military style on the sides and about three inches on top. His inexpensive three-quarter-length down jacket was a slightly lighter shade of gray than his suit. The suit's label simply said New York, with no store name. A dry cleaning tag in the jacket just bore 'a little scribble of blue pen, not even a number,' Scrimshaw said. The pockets were empty except for eight cents. The man's dental work was average, with the lower right wisdom tooth either missing or impacted.
Scattered near the body were some scraps of paper bearing the telephone numbers and names of the Allison and Sharon hotels and a number of real estate offices in Miami Beach and Surfside.
Written neatly in black pen, they seemed to be printed by the same person, some on the back of what appears to be an airline boarding pass. The detectives think the addresses may have been places where he sought employment. Yet no one at those places remembers him -- except for a single slim lead.
A woman in one real estate office recalled that about three weeks to a month ago, a 'well-dressed man who acted a little strange' walked in on a weekend. He had lost or been robbed of his valuables, he said, and wanted to go home on a Greyhound bus. He asked for a job cleaning up. She gave him a $5 bill. She cannot say if he is the same man police seek to identify.
Kromsky and Scrimshaw canvassed hospitals, the Salvation Army, Camillus House and other charities without success.
The only theory that seems to make sense, Scrimshaw says, is that 'he came from another area, was unable to find any way to make a living and must have gotten depressed.'
Nobody has reported the man missing. He is mourned only by the detectives who are troubled by what happened to him.
'It is a very sad way for a person to end up,' said police spokesman James Mazer. 'We would like to find out who he is. Somebody has to know him.'
A missing mom calls police
Published March 25, 1988
Baby Elizabeth might no longer be alone in a world of strangers -- but a new baby boy is, in another case of baby sitters left with children whose mothers do not come back. He is 5 weeks old.
A woman surfaced Thursday to say she is the mother who left 21-month-old Elizabeth with a baby sitter last year.
She said she has been out of town.
She got back Feb. 14, she said. She saw the little girl she left behind on television newscasts and the front page of Thursday's Miami Herald after the Dade state attorney's office went public with the case.
Assistant State Attorney James Smart had intended, if a search could not locate the child's parents, to try to have her committed to the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services so she could be adopted. A hearing is set for next week.
A woman called Smart on Thursday to ask if Elizabeth's mother faced arrest. When he said no, she introduced herself: Toni Tigreros, also known as Toni Williams, and Antoinette Tigeros, age 34.
She has been arrested many, many times on prostitution- related charges, usually alone, but on at least one occasion last summer with a woman named Candy Lipstick.
She wants her daughter back, she told Smart. 'She is still getting her life together,' he said Thursday. She said she will be at the hearing.
The baby sitter who notified police on New Year's Eve said Elizabeth stayed in various homes in her neighborhood for six months. She kept the child for three months and had not heard from the mother in a month. She did not know Elizabeth's last name and became alarmed.
The woman phone caller told Smart she has never been divorced from Elizabeth's father, who lives in Hialeah. She said the blond and bubbly little girl was born in Las Vegas.
The same night Elizabeth appeared on TV in an effort to find her name and her family, a Miami Beach baby sitter called police to report another child left by his mother.
Officer Charles Seraydar answered the call to the Henry Hotel, 536 Washington Ave.
He found a baby wrapped in a blanket and wearing only a Pamper.
'What an adorable little boy,' he said, 'perfectly healthy, quiet and funny.'
The couple who notified police said the mother left the baby boy with them for a few hours March 17. She never returned. She did call, they said, but when they asked her to come for her baby she replied she did not want to.
'The husband is sick and out of work,' Seraydar said. 'They have their own little baby and just couldn't afford to keep another one. They said, 'We can't afford to raise our own, never mind somebody else's responsibility.' '
Seraydar said the mother, who is 37 and believed to be a drug user, has had 11 children. The two oldest, he said, are reportedly runaways, 'out on their own somewhere.' The other nine, including the baby, are in HRS custody.
Juvenile authorities, Seraydar said, indicate that the situation is not unusual.
Did hit men get the wrong target?
Published: March 7, 1988
The ultimate in senseless crime: murder by mistake.
Two men, both Cuban-Americans from Florida, wanted to be doctors and studied at a medical school in the Dominican Republic. Their names sound alike. They resemble each other.
One was left dead by a roadside.
Police suspect that hired killers might have made a mistake and murdered the wrong man.
Ignacio Pereda, 26, whose parents live in Miami, dreamed of being a surgeon. He was to graduate from medical school on Feb. 12.
But three weeks before graduation, someone kidnapped Pereda, tortured him and dumped his lifeless body on the side of a remote road next to a sugar cane field in the Dominican Republic.
There seemed to be no motive for the brutal slaying. Clean cut, hard-working and quiet, Pereda seemed to have no enemies, no bad habits that could have contributed to his demise.
But then police began to look over a previous incident involving another student at the school, the Universidad Central del Este.
Shortly before the murder, a student named Jorge Sotolongo had a run-in with a jealous husband.
According to Dominican police, the husband fired a gun while Sotolongo was in a bathroom. No one was hit.
Sotolongo did not know Pereda. But Pereda went by a nickname quite similar to Sotolongo. Pereda's fellow tennis players affectionately dubbed him Bobolongo -- because he was 'quiet and innocent.'
Bobolongo and Sotolongo resembled each other, though Pereda was taller.
At six feet three, Pereda was a black belt in karate, 'but very shy, introverted,' says Maria Virginia Garcia, 24, Pereda's friend and classmate.
'He didn't smoke, or drink or fool around. He was very educated, an old-fashioned person,' Garcia says. 'He was never in trouble. No drugs, no alcohol, no women. I was the only girlfriend he had in five or six years in this country. There are very few men like him nowadays. He was raised by older parents and was very innocent, very serious and respectful. I'm sure that Ignacio didn't have any enemies or any problems with anybody. I knew him. He always told me everything.'
On the day he was last seen alive, Pereda studied hard for a final exam in neurology. Later, friends found his study papers spread out on the desk of his room.
That Monday evening, Jan. 18, Pereda went alone to La Taquito, a fast-food restaurant frequented by foreign students.
Some people told his family that Pereda went to a movie that night and a hoodlum told him someone outside wanted to see him. Garcia, his girlfriend, doubts the story because of his upcoming test. She said he did not like the run-down theaters in San Pedro de Macoris, a city of sugar mills and baseball fields, 40 miles east of Santo Domingo.
Pereda vanished that Monday evening. On Wednesday morning, the day of his final exam, a policeman found his brutalized body. His shirt was open. So were his trousers, which were lowered. His shoes were missing. His passport was still in his pocket.
So severely was he beaten, his own cousin did not recognize him. He was identified by the birthmark on his back and his long, sensitive hands, the hands of a surgeon.
'Apparently, the homicide is still under investigation,' said Peter Brennan, information officer at the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo. He acknowledged little other than 'a medical student was found mutilated and left in the street.'
Aware of Pereda's nickname, police recalled Sotolongo and questioned the husband. They later released him for lack of evidence. The Miami Herald could not reach him for comment.
Police also questioned Sotolongo, suspecting he may have been the real target for murder.
'We believe the murder could have been a mistake,' said San Pedro de Macoris Police First Lt. Jose Antonio Torres.
Though still six months short of graduation, Sotolongo left the Dominican Republic and returned to his home in St. Petersburg.
'It's not in my best interests to go back,' Sotolongo said. Sotolongo's father, a pediatrician, said his son 'is more calm now. I don't think he is in any danger, he is here with me. He is sorry for the other boy. He doesn't know if they killed him by mistake or if they wanted to kill him.'
In Miami, 'we're all heartbroken,' said Patty Kent, Pereda's cousin.
The parents, Lydia and Erasmo Pereda, had been married for 13 years when their son was born. He was their only child.
He was 3 when they came to the United States from Cuba. His death has devastated his parents. His aunt, Aida Rodriguez, a stately and soft-spoken, 67-year-old retired physician, wants to go to the Dominican Republic.
'We want answers,' she said.
Cab driver fearing death kills an armed robber
Published March 6, 1988
A Miami taxi driver with a concealed weapons permit stared down the barrel of a robber's gun early Saturday, then emptied his own .45-caliber handgun at the holdup man, an ex-convict with a history of trying to kill police officers.
The robber tried to shoot back but forgot to release the safety on his 9mm automatic handgun, said Miami homicide Sgt. Gerald Green.
The holdup man, Orlando Hernandez Barroso, 29, died, hit about seven times.
Miami police said it is their first such shooting by a permit holder since the law went into effect Oct. 1.
'This sends a major message to the rest of the robbers out there,' Sgt. Green said. 'The cabbie thought his life was in immediate danger.'
'Please, I don't want to talk about it,' said Mark Steven Yuhr, 33, the taxi driver. 'I can barely see straight,' he said, his face drawn and grim after a sleepless night.
Yuhr, a native Miamian, told homicide detective Eunice Cooper he believed the robber 'was going to shoot me and leave me dead in the street.'
'He's not a Rambo,' Sgt. Green said. 'He's very shaken up.'
The thin and intense Yuhr drives a leased cab at night, one of Miami's most dangerous professions. By day he does odd jobs and deliveries.
'He's really a nice person,' said his landlord, Lewis Reese, 81. 'He doesn't bother with women, and he never fails to pay his rent on time. He's very quiet, just sort of a loner. I'm glad he stood up for himself.'
Yuhr was dispatched to Coconut Grove late Friday to pick up a fare near the Tigertail Lounge. His passenger asked to go to the 2400 block of Southwest 24th Terrace, in a quiet residential neighborhood.
When they arrived, the fare pulled a Smith & Wesson 9mm automatic and demanded money. The cabbie gave him $90.
The furious robber screamed, ' 'I want more money. I want more money or I'm going to kill you!' ' Yuhr told police.
The gunman ordered the cabbie out and crawled from the back to the driver's seat. When the robber glanced away, Yuhr reached for the .45 Colt in his waistband and opened fire.
'He unloaded one round after another,' Sgt. Green said. 'The robber was trying to squeeze off a few and shoot back. But he forgot to take his gun off safety, and within those split seconds, the cabdriver got him.'
His gun empty, Yuhr tried to wrestle the gun away from the bleeding man, who would not let go.
'He pulled the robber out of the cab and reached in under the driver's seat where he kept his second gun, a .38-caliber revolver,' Green said.
At that point the mortally wounded robber dropped his gun. Yuhr tried to summon help on his radio, but a bullet had shattered the microphone. The cabbie shouted for neighbors to call police. He held his second gun on the holdup man until they arrived.
'He was emotionally upset,' Green said. 'It took a little while to get him calmed down. He broke down a little bit.'
The robber was pronounced dead at Jackson Memorial Hospital. He had the cabbie's wallet in his pocket. His past includes arrests for armed robbery, gun violations and attempted first-degree murder of a police officer.
In 1981, Barroso shot out the windshield of a Hialeah patrol car, which then crashed. He also shot at Miami Springs police during a chase. He was sentenced to 12 years in Raiford.
Police say Yuhr has no record. He completed a gun safety course at Tamiami Range and Gun Shop and applied for a concealed weapons permit soon after the law was passed.
'I'm happy at least it's working, it's what we had in mind,' said Mike Freire, general manager at Tamiami. 'We want the law-abiding citizen to be able to defend himself. It's too bad somebody had to die to make the point.'
The cabbie, he said, 'used the weapon correctly to defend himself. Without the law in effect, he would be a dead man this morning.'
Though police call the shooting justifiable, Yuhr may lose his job. According to local taxi regulations drivers must be unarmed. The cabbie told police, however, that he believes that state law supersedes local law and that someone with a concealed weapon permit is allowed to carry a gun in a cab.
'They're not going to let him drive for a while,' said Neal Green, at Diamond Cab. 'He's suspended without pay. But he's alive.'
Miami Beach cops arrest 'walking crime spree'
Published: March 4, 1988
A California street gang punk with a $400-a-day crack cocaine habit, so afraid of dying he clings to a yellow baby blanket, gave Miami Beach detectives Thursday the solution to a very strange crime spree. And a Hollywood murder.
To disbelieving detectives, Daniel Acosta, 19, demonstrated how he broke into hundreds of cars. He took a chip from an auto part, attached it to a wire, wet it and then flicked it against a car window. The glass shattered silently. He pushed it in easily.
Skeptical police videotaped him and tried the technique themselves on abandoned cars. To their astonishment, it worked. Perfectly.
Then, Acosta casually mentioned something else: an unsolved homicide.
Thursday, after an intensive three-day investigation, police had jailed three other youths for the murder of William Reilly, 59, a travel agent.
Reilly died Feb. 21 in his own bedroom at 5769 Washington St., Hollywood, trussed with a telephone cord, a belt around his neck and a sock stuffed down his throat.
'It's a very unusual scenario,' said Miami Beach Police Chief Kenneth Glassman. For police, it began Monday afternoon, Feb. 29.
Acosta got into an argument about a TV set that had been stolen about four times. This time it had been stolen from Anthony Chen, 24, and Edward Chang, 27.
They blamed Acosta and during a fight stabbed him three times in the shoulder. The wounds were superficial and he fled.
Police officer Thomas Moran had to chase him down to give him first aid. Police arrested Chang and Chen.
Chen was not difficult to identify. Almost his entire body is covered by intricate tattoo artwork. Chen said it took eight hours a day for three months to complete. He is a fugitive from Los Angeles, where he had served time in Folsom Prison for another stabbing.
Burglary detective Kenneth Miller interviewed the fearful Acosta. He was terrified. He wanted to sleep at police headquarters. He clung to a baby blanket.
He came to Miami Beach last year from Long Beach, Calif., where he had been a member of the West Side Anaheims since age 13.
'People were getting shot, my friends were dying,' he said. 'I didn't want to end up like that.'
Gang warfare killed more than 30 of his friends, he said.
In Miami Beach, Acosta said, he 'got caught up in crack' and began a new life of crime with a loosely knit group of local teenagers.
They stole sound equipment from the Miami Beach Convention Center and sold it to a punk rock group performing at a South Beach theater, he said. They specialized in stealing expensive radios and car phones from luxury cars parked near the convention center.
'A lot of BMWs have guns in the glove compartment,' he told police. 'You always look for the gun.'
In the new Mercedes Benz, 'it takes 10 or 15 seconds to remove the radio. You just slide out the ashtray and cut the cable.'
He did this without opening car doors 'because most of them have alarms,' he said.
'This man is a walking crime spree,' said police spokesman James Mazer.
At midday Feb. 22, near the convention center, Acosta said, he and others broke into a 380 SL Mercedes owned by Bernardo Fernandez of DiLido Island.
A man watched from a nearby pay phone. He walked up and said, 'When you get that out of there, bring it across the street and I'll buy it from you.'
They did and he did. They sold him the radio and car phone, valued at $800 each, for $40. The unidentified buyer drove off with his bargains in a car bearing out-of-state plates, Acosta said.
As the interview drew to a close, Acosta, who wears a Mazda Boys tattoo on his right leg, casually mentioned murder. He said his friends had been scanning the newspaper. He knew the details.
Some of Acosta's friends had 'turned tricks' with Reilly. The night of the murder they met him on Collins Avenue near 21st Street and went to his Hollywood condominium. He wanted sex. They wanted to rob him.
Police say Gene David Wormsley, 18, of 35A Venetian Way, seized Reilly from behind and held his arms, as he struggled. Louis Hernandez, 19, bound and gagged the victim. A 16-year-old boy was also present.
The next day, before the murder was discovered, the killers invited two teen-age friends to join them at the dead man's condo. They took his VCR, cash, jewelry, credit cards, even his jacket.
Police arrested the juvenile and Wormsley Wednesday night. The younger boy had some of the dead man's jewelry, police said.
Hernandez fled to Texas, where he was arrested at noon Thursday, at the Houston home of a relative.
The case is still unfolding. 'Two mothers came in to plead, 'Please don't let them come home,' ' Lt. Julian Quiros said.
Enraged man, 90, kills his bride of six days
Published Feb. 28, 1988
Vincenzo Quinto's first marriage lasted for 62 years. His second ended after six days.
He battered his petite bride to death with more than a dozen blows from a claw hammer as they were about to embark on their honeymoon cruise, police say.
She was 76. He is 90.
Quinto, a great-grandfather of 10, is in Dade County Jail charged with second-degree murder. Judge Calvin Mapp denied him bond at a hearing Saturday.
'It's a sad case, a tragic incident,' said Metro-Dade homicide detective Pat Diaz, who arrested the elderly bridegroom.
The fatal argument was apparently about the couple's weekend plans, a cruise to Freeport on the SeaEscape. She wanted to go. He had second thoughts.
They were married a week ago Saturday at The Church of the Little Flower in Coral Gables. His son, Louis, 59, was the best man. Her daughter was the matron of honor.
The tiny bride, just four feet, 11 inches tall, wore a small veil and carried a bouquet of pink and white flowers. A reception for 85 followed at the Miami Springs Country Club.
The newlyweds dined on filet mignon, nibbled on wedding cake and drank champagne toasts. The musicians, old friends of the groom, played the accordion, piano and guitar. The owner- manager, Tony Molina, sang It's Impossible.
'It was impossible for one to live without the other,' Molina said Saturday. 'It was very touching, there was so much love around.
'It was a beautiful day and we held the reception in the garden. They acted shy and a lot younger. They looked so happy. It proved to me that you're never too old to fall in love again. I said that day that I wish when I'm that age, I'm just like them.'
Molina said he was told that Quinto, a retired builder, had met a number of other eligible women in the lonely time after his wife died and he was alone, but that 'this man waited until he met the right woman for him. She was so nice, very petite and sweet. They danced the first dance and they looked so lively. It was perfect.'
The turn of events Friday left Molina shocked.
The murder took place at Quinto's home, an immaculately kept yellow house that he himself built at 3501 SW 110th Ave. In the yard the stone statues of two naked cherubs hug, an orange tree is laden with fruit and the flame red hibiscus and poinsettia are in full bloom. In the carport was the Cadillac Cimmaron Quinto had bought for his new wife.
Inside the house the couple's suitcases were packed and at the front door ready to go. But an argument erupted.
Shortly after 4 p.m., Vincenzo Quinto went to the house he built on a spacious corner lot next door. His son Louis lives there with his family. The old man told them what he had done. They found his wife dead and called police.
The shocked family said Saturday that they are not sure exactly what happened. They huddled with their attorney, Manuel Gonzalez Jr., who will represent the accused man.
Louis appeared devastated. 'This time last Saturday,' he said softly, 'we were on our way to the church.'
He and other family members describe Quinto as a hard- working, healthy man who lived an impeccable life until his arrest on murder charges Friday.
Born in Italy in 1898, Quinto came to this country in 1920. He met his first wife in 1924. Eventually he moved his family from New York to Miami. He has four children and 17 grandchildren.
When his wife fell ill, 'he took care of her for three years before she died,' said Marie Quinto, a daughter-in-law. 'He went to the hospital every day.'
When his wife died 15 months ago, Quinto took it hard. He was depressed at being alone. The family was concerned about him.
'He was a one-woman man,' his son-in-law, Dominick Savino, said.
Four months ago, the lonely widower met Anna Valenza. She was also Italian, also alone. She had been divorced. They fell in love.
'We were happy for the two of them,' Marie Quinto said. 'She was a very lovely woman.'
Quinto underwent a physical just before his wedding. The doctors pronounced him in good health. Though he retired at age 80, he still worked and kept active. His eyesight was excellent. His driver license is valid until 1992, and he loves to dance.
'He could dance all night,' his son, Louis, said.
Quinto and his new wife planned to move to Century Village where they would begin their new life together.
Anna would have been 77 on Tuesday. She, too, was in good health, according to Assistant Dade County Medical Examiner Dr. Bruce Hyma. Her death was caused by blunt trauma to the head.
'It's really sad, you wonder what went through his mind,' Hyma said.
'He needed companionship and he found it in this woman,' said Savino, the son-in-law. 'It didn't work out.'
'It was not a pretty picture,' detective Diaz said. 'It seemed like he was in love with her and very fond of her. It was just an argument, it happened during an argument.'
It was the first time Quinto was arrested, the detective said. 'He was a little upset, it really hit him when I took him to the jail.'
Quinto takes pills for his heart and became shaky, so the detective took him to Ward D, the prison ward at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Doctors examined him, said he was in good health and he was returned to the jail.
He was lodged in a 10th-floor dormitory Saturday night, with two color TV sets, a pool table, telephones and other elderly inmates.
'You see very few cases like this, involving people this age,' Diaz said. 'You can't really say why he did what he did. I'm still investigating.'
Murder roundup with 4 shot dead in day's first 9 hours
Published: Jan. 23, 1988
Gunfire greeted the day with four people shot dead by 9:14 a.m. Friday. By 9:15 a.m., somebody had shot and wounded fleeing murder suspect Patrick Beckford.
Miami police thought they did it.
They were wrong.
When Beckford, 23, was found sprawled on the sidewalk, a bullet crease in his thigh, it appeared to be the first Miami police shooting of the year. It was a logical conclusion.
Beckford had just been chased from the scene of a drug-den murder. He had aimed his gun at a pursuing police officer and the officer had shot at him. Twice.
Officer Walter Byars, 28, a six-year police veteran, went home believing he had shot Beckford.
But Miami homicide detectives then discovered powder burns on Beckford's trousers and on his wounded right thigh. Officer Byars had fired at Beckford from at least 60 feet away.
Powder burns occur at close range.
'That's not going to happen from more than 18 inches away,' homicide Lt. Mike Gonzalez said.
Beckford's powder burns seemed to indicate that the bullet that struck him had been fired from less than a foot away.
Then police examined the flesh wound, at a downward angle, on Beckford's right thigh.
Police now believe that the officer's bullets missed Beckford, who was shot, possibly by his own gun, during a mishap at the murder scene. The killing took place at a known dope house in an apartment at 1217 NW Second Ave., next door to a lounge.
The man who lived there, Daniel M. Brooks, 33, was killed, shot several times with a semi-automatic pistol.
Officers Carrie Mathis and Byars were on the way to investigate reports of a shooting when a 1980 Toyota Corolla occupied by Beckford and another man raced by and ran a red light. The officers chased the car at high speeds for several blocks until it careened into a parking lot and struck a restaurant owner's unoccupied auto. Two men jumped from the gray Toyota, guns in hands, police said, and ran. One aimed his gun at the officers, who took cover behind their car doors. Then he turned and ran.
They chased him. Several times he wheeled, leveling his gun at the officers, they said. Byars fired two shots. As the officers pounded around a corner, they found Beckford wounded on the sidewalk.
He had tossed away about $80 and a gun, found nearby, police said.
Beckford, of 2165 NW 93rd St., is charged with first-degree murder, aggravated assault on the officers and gun law violations.
The second suspect got away.
Police plan to compare ballistics in the drug house murder with slugs from a double murder seven hours earlier.
There are similarities.
It was 2:20 a.m. Eddie Coney, 16, sat in a chair and Wallace McEveen, 22, was perched atop a stool outside a game room where people congregate to shoot pool and play video games.
The spot is also a major hangout for crack cocaine dealers, Metro-Dade homicide detective John Parmenter said.
'It looks to me like somebody walked up, got in close and shot them both,' Parmenter said.
A number of witnesses were in the area, police say, but detectives could find no one who would admit seeing the killings.
Each was shot several times. The first officer to arrive found both men dead. They had had little time to react to danger. One man lay atop his collapsed chair. The other had been shot off his stool.
No drugs were found, police said.
Coney lived with his father in a rooming house next door. The man 'came downstairs, looked at his son's body and said, 'Yep, that's junior,' ' Parmenter said.
'He looked tired, like a hard-working man,' the detective said.
Both young Coney and McEveen had prior brushes with the law, police said.
'I'm sure there are witnesses,' said Parmenter, who described the slayings as 'vicious.'
There was a witness to the gunshot death of Lisa Greene, 26, police said. They are dubious about his story.
Greene died in an Opa-locka rooming house, at 2170 Washington Ave. The man she was with before dawn said that she fired a large-caliber bullet into the side of her own skull, a suicide.
She left no suicide note. Metro-Dade homicide detectives were not convinced.
'We took prints and we're still looking into the facts,' said detective Thomas Romagni.