Last night, a 24-year-old named Jamal Singletary pulled an assault rifle and started shooting at an officer in Allapattah. The detective pulled his own weapon and fired back, killing Singletary on the spot, police say.
Singletary becomes the eighth suspect killed by police fire in an urban Miami neighborhood since last summer. But the difference, in his case, is that he was killed by a Miami-Dade officer, not a member of embattled Chief Miguel Exposito's City of Miami force.
Around 9:40 p.m., a Miami-Dade detective spotted Singletary "driving erratically" in a car with stolen tags, police say.
The detective -- a member of the county's Robbery Intervention Detail -- tried to pull him over, but Singletary led him into the Miami city limits down NW 32nd Street.
At the corner of NW Eighth Avenue, the suspect began shooting. Both Singletary and the detective left their cars and fired at each other, police say, until Singletary fell dead of a gunshot wound.
"I think tonight we're fortunate that we're not burying another officer as a result of an assault rifle," Det. Roy Rutland, a department spokesman, tells the Miami Herald.
Singletary had a criminal record, including an open felony charge of aggravated assault with a firearm filed last June.
He'd earlier been convicted of felony cocaine possession.
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