‘Heroic’ cop stops gunman near Miami Beach school, body-camera footage shows

Twenty-four seconds after receiving 911 calls about a man firing his gun near North Beach Elementary School, Miami Beach police were face to face with the armed suspect.

They drew their weapons, aimed down the sights — and didn’t shoot.

Instead, a responding officer calmly talked down the gunman, who eventually put away the loaded handgun after initially ignoring police officers’ shouted commands.

It was a demonstration of threat deescalation that earned Sgt. Jeff Motola and his colleague, Sgt. Alex Llaneras, a commendation from the City Commission and applause from members of the public.

“They’re heroes,” said Miami Beach Police Chief Richard Clements, addressing the commission Monday. “Not only did [Motola] use tremendous discretion but empathy and compassion in getting the subject to go ahead and put the firearm down.”

The commission reviewed Motola’s body-camera footage of the Nov. 6 incident. The video showed Motola aiming down the barrel of his pistol, urging the suspect to put away his weapon.

Police arrived at the corner of 41st Street and Chase Avenue before 6 p.m., as a “heavy flow” of vehicular and pedestrian traffic surrounded Eddie Reed, who was holding a 9-millimeter pistol in his right hand on the sidewalk.

“Whatever you’re going through, it’s not worth it,” Motola can be heard saying in the video. “Please put the gun down.”

Reed was standing less than 17 feet from North Beach Elementary School, where parents were picking up their children at the time of the incident.

The school, which offers after-school care, was placed on lockdown as a result of the gunman’s presence. The crime scene was about 150 feet from Temple Beth Sholom, located on Chase Avenue. The standoff lasted about two minutes.

“There were lots of pedestrians out at that time, lots of vehicular traffic,” Clements said. “The area itself is surrounded, if you will, by religious institutions and also an elementary school with an active after-care.”

A witness had told police he heard what sounded like a shot being fired. Directly across the street, police later recovered a bullet lodged inside a store’s exterior wall.

Clements addressed the commission Monday morning with Motola and Llaneras by his side. He said officers and the public at large were fortunate the reported shooting ended peacefully.

“This is the type of situation that we think can never happen to us,” he said. “And we hope it never does. But in this case, it did.”

Clements said it was important for the commission, and especially the two new commissioners who were sworn in on Monday, to see the footage in order to “understand what you’re getting in your police department — and that’s the best.”

Reed was arrested on several charges, including discharging a firearm in public and carrying a concealed firearm. He told police he did not recall much of the incident, blaming his diabetes.

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said he arranged for the public screening of the footage because the officers’ actions were praiseworthy.

“I suspect that if this had played out in a lot of other cities, instantaneously someone would have been shot dead. And because of training, because of the culture that you all have created in our department, there’s a man alive today,” Gelber said.

He pushed back against the constant scrutiny police officers face.

“A police force our size makes thousands of decisions every day and police are so scrutinized, often Monday morning, often if something takes a bad bounce,” he said. “And I think for me I always like to say, you all put yourselves in peril so that we don’t have to.”