Manhunt after Miami shooting leaves two dead and 22 injured

Local police are appealing for help to locate the Florida gunmen suspected of killing at least two people and injuring 22 others in a mass shooting on Sunday morning.

The shooting took place in the wee hours of Sunday morning just south of Miami, and the suspects are still unknown and at large.

Marcus Lemonis, a media personality and CEO of Camping World, has put up a $100,000 reward to anyone who provides information that leads to justice. He tweeted, “I’m offering $100,000 reward to help authorities in my hometown of @MiamiDadePD arrest and convict the suspect/suspects… pass this on.”

The chief of the Miami-Dade police department Alfredo Ramirez said he was grateful for this contribution and echoed the calls for the community to help with the search.

“We need our county to step up with information,” he said, urging those who know anything to send tips.

“This type of gun violence has to stop. Every weekend, it’s the same thing. This is targeted. This is definitely not random.”

According to The New York Times, there have been more than 236 of mass shootings in the the US since the start of 2021.

Mr Ramirez also said that the local branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives contributed $25,000 to the reward fund, increasing the total to $125,000.

The police have an established timeline of the event, saying that at just after 12 am, a white Nissan Pathfinder arrived at a banquet hall and three people got out of the car “with assault rifles and handguns and starting firing indiscriminately into the crowd”.

It is believed that two people lost their lives, and 22 were injured, with two in a serious condition in hospital.

The venue, the El Mula Banquet Hall, had been rented out for a concert, that two members of Angelica Green’s family members were attending. She spoke to reporters at the scene on Sunday, telling them her son had been shot in the stomach, but was stable following an operation. “However, my nephew was shot four times,” she said.

When talking of her son, she said, “he’s not a statistic. He’s a graduate from college last year. So he’s educated. He was going out with his educated cousin to just celebrate the weekend, and they had not made it into the club as of yet.”

The governor of the state, Ron DeSantis expressed his sadness about the tragedy. He tweeted a message on Sunday.

“We mourn the loss of the two victims and are praying for the recovery of the more than 20 people injured at El Mula Banquet Hall near Hialeah,” he wrote. “We are working with local authorities to bring justice to the perpetrators.”

This is the second shooting in the Miami area in one weekend, with the first happening on Friday in the Wynwood district. Miami Police Chief Art Acevado called for national action on gun violence.

“We need the federal government and both sides to address this issue because without legislation, without certainty as it relates to holding these criminals accountable, we’re never going to get through the summer without much more death and destruction,” he said on CBS’ Face The Nation on Sunday.

In 2016, one of the biggest mass shootings in recent U.S history was in Florida at the LGBT+ nightclub Pulse in Orlando, where 49 people died and 53 people were injured.