Heart-stopping cellphone video appears to capture the fight before a Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent shot and killed a man in southwest Miami-Dade.
Deputies responded to the shooting shortly after 9 a.m. Thursday in the area of Southwest 157th Avenue and Southwest 140th Street.
Investigators said the agent was inside his vehicle when a man who was standing in the street approached and started hitting the vehicle’s window.
The agent exited and there was a physical altercation, and at one point the other man threw the agent to the ground and got on top of him, officials said.
Video taken by a driver appears to show that fight between the two men as cars honk in the busy roadway. It also shows the moment one of the men picks up the other and slams him to the ground, then gets on top of him.
One of the men can be heard yelling, “Help, help, help! He’s got a gun.”
The footage shakes as the driver recording appears to get out of their car, also warning, “Hey, he got a gun.” Then, a shot goes off.
The sheriff’s office said it was the FDLE agent who opened fire, shooting the man who had slammed him to the ground.
Witness Julyana Adam said she was inside her home when she heard a single gunshot.
“All I hear is ‘help, help he has a gun,'” Adam said. “Then a gunshot goes off.”
A Miami Police officer who was in the area and Miami-Dade deputies responded and gave the person lifesaving efforts, but they were pronounced dead at the scene.
On Friday, the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office identified the man who was killed as 28-year-old Daniel Thomas Shand.
FDLE said the agent was on duty at the time of the shooting, but haven’t said what he was doing in the neighborhood.
The agent suffered minor injuries during the altercation and was taken to a local hospital for treatment, FDLE said. He was placed on administrative leave as is standard procedure.
Adam said she soon learned who died.
“The landlord, he stepped out and he’s like, ‘that’s one of ours,'” she said. “That’s when I was like, you know, that’s my neighbor.”
A normally quiet neighborhood was shattered by violence. Adam, like many of her neighbors, wants to know why.
“It was scary… to hear them arguing in the beginning and then to hear somebody say ‘help, help’ and I can’t do much other than like look out the window,” she said. “Whatever happened there, shouldn’t have happened, or escalated to that level.”
The sheriff’s office’s Homicide Bureau is investigating at the request of FDLE, officials said.
