Two Taxi Passengers Wounded in Miami Beach Drive-By Shooting

A red BMW convertible with the top down rolled alongside a yellow taxi cab on Pine Tree Drive early this morning, past the million-dollar Miami Beach mansions and the gnarled old trees that give the road its name. 

Suddenly, gunfire raked the side of the taxi as the convertible squealed away. Inside the cab, one passenger was hit in the head and another grazed by the bullets.

"The last I was advised, he was in stable condition," Officer Ernesto Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Miami Beach Police Department, tells New Times of the victim hit in the head. 

Traffic is snarled around Pine Tree and Arthur Godfrey this morning as police try to sort out what happened to spark the drive-by — just one of several bloody incidents around Dade County last night, including a mass shooting in Liberty City.

The Miami Beach case began just after 3 a.m., Rodriguez says, when a frantic call came into 911 about gunfire hitting a cab. Police found the cab stopped near 39th Street and Pine Tree Drive with the two wounded men inside.

So far, detectives are working on their eyewitness account — the gunfire came from a red BMW convertible with the top down and four black men inside, Rodriguez says. Did the victims know the assailants? "I don't have any information about that yet," Rodriguez says. 

In Liberty City, detectives from the City of Miami are sorting through another crime scene. Details are scarce so far on that case, but the shooting happened near 70th Street and Eighth Avenue around 1 a.m.

Gunfire hit at least three victims, including a woman and a teen, the Miami Herald reports, with all victims taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital. 

At least one more man was shot and killed in another incident late last night — Miami-Dade Police say a fight near SW 132nd Avenue and 18th Street lead to a shootout that left one man dead.