A shooting involving a bus driver and passengers on a Miami-Dade Transit bus left two men dead early Sunday.
Police were dispatched to the corner of a shopping plaza at Northwest Seventh Avenue and 183rd Street at 2:50 a.m. in Miami Gardens, a suburb north of Miami.
“Preliminary investigation revealed the operator from the bus got into a verbal dispute and fired several rounds in the bus, striking and killing two passengers,” Miami Gardens police told NBC News in a statement Monday.
The victims were airlifted to Aventura Hospital in critical condition and later pronounced dead from their injuries, police said.
police spokesperson Diani Delgado told NBC South Florida that the argument began inside the parked bus, escalating to the bus driver drawing a gun and shooting the two passengers. Officials said the driver was detained and taken in for questioning.
Witness Wabe God told NBC South Florida he heard six shots as he was coming from a store, believing it was the moment they were fired.
“They was on a county bus and they was probably just trying to get to their next destination, and then somebody just decided to take their life,” God said. “I do not like the violence that is going on in my neighborhood ... and it’s not fair to the community or the people that stay around here or whoever family that was taken or whatever.”
The motive remains under investigation. Delgado said it was an isolated incident.
“I don’t think the community needs to be frightened,” Delgado told NBC South Florida.
Miami Gardens police are conducting the investigation and not yet releasing names of those involved.
