First 911 calls from UPS shootout: One driver recounts bullet passing through his pickup
The first batch of phone calls to 911 released from the hijack of a UPS truck and the chaotic deadly shootout with police that followed is unusual for one reason: How calm and matter-of-fact callers were about describing their vehicles being riddled with gunfire as they were stuck in heavy Miramar traffic.
The Miramar Police Department on Wednesday released seven calls made to Broward Sheriff’s Office dispatchers that originated at or near the shooting site, most of them well after the gunfire had ended, leaving four people dead. Killed were two gunmen suspected of robbing a jewelry store in Coral Gables, a UPS worker whose truck the gunmen hijacked and an innocent bystander who was struck in his car at the intersection where the main shootout took place.
Almost all the civilians who called 911 told police they were originally trapped near the intersection of Miramar Parkway and Flamingo Road. All managed to escape. One man said bullets ripped through his Dodge Ram truck and right past the seat where his daughter usually sits — but she wasn’t there at that moment, “thank God.”
“I know it’s a mess now in Miramar. But I was at the light and my truck got shot twice. I got two bullets that went all the way through the truck,” he told the dispatcher. After a pause, he said, “That was crazy, man.”
Two others said they were trapped next to or directly in front of the UPS truck that was taking gunfire from the officers.
One woman told a dispatcher her husband was stuck directly in front of the UPS truck “and they shot his car.” She said her husband managed to escape in his gray Hyundai Sonata. But before he escaped, the woman said her husband had to lay back, “so he didn’t get hit.”
She then went outside her home to count the bullet holes in her husband’s car. “One, two, three, four, five. There’s about five shots,” she said.
Another victim said her car was stuck right next to the UPS truck. She told the dispatcher she was calling from home but discovered “bullet wounds” in her black Honda Accord.
Another woman told a dispatcher she was “in the middle of a shooting. I’m okay, but my car just got a bullet, got shot.” When the dispatcher asked for her license plate number, the woman actually walked out of the gym she ran into for safety, to retrieve it. The woman then asked if the shooting was over yet, “did they catch the guy?”
“Yes, it’s over,” the dispatcher responded.
Miramar police couldn’t immediately explain the low volume of calls during the lengthy chase and shootout that was captured on live television. Public Information Officer Tania Rues said she requested all calls from BSO that were related to the shootout and that originated in Miramar. She said if calls came from Pembroke Pines or anywhere else along the route, they would not have been sent to Miramar so there are likely many more as the shooting was going on.
The incident that led to the deadly shootout in Miramar began last Thursday afternoon when armed robbers Lamar Alexander and Ronnie Hill, both 41, robbed a Regent Jewelers in Coral Gables. One man stayed in a rented U-Haul while the other went inside posing as a postal employee.
In the store one of the robbers fired into the ground, the bullet ricocheting and striking a worker. The store manager then chased the robber out of the store firing at him. After getting away in the U-Haul, police said Hill and Alexander ditched the vehicle and carjacked a UPS truck driven by Frank Ordonez. The truck finally came to a standstill in traffic at the Miramar intersection and police converged, firing hundreds of rounds as people sat in vehicles near the UPS truck or walked nearby.
By the time the shooting stopped, Ordonez and a motorist named Rick Cutshaw were dead. It’s unclear whose bullets killed the men. Also killed were Alexander and Hill.
In the days since the failed heist, authorities and the public have questioned the police response to the crime along busy highways and a crowded intersection.
Miami Herald reporter David Smiley contributed to this story.
