A quadruple shooting of Miami-Dade police officers by a clearly troubled young man got even stranger, when the suspect's ties to another notorious shooting were uncovered. One officer died in the shooting, by a young man wearing body armor and toting an AK 47, who had apparently stolen another man's identity (clearly, the other man could have been killed had he been in South Florida when police caught up with him.) He wound up hold up in a Pembroke Pines apartment complex a day later, and died in a hail of bullets by police, who reportedly shot him a dozen times, including one bullet in the back. Now, the case is raising questions of whether police need heavier firepower, and whether their reactions in such a stressful situation were valid. (Studies have shown that police are actually less trigger happy than the public.)
A Timeline of the shooting can be found here. Six people are now under arrest for allegedly helping the killer evade police. And now for the truly weird stuff:
Shawn LaBeet, wanted in Thursday's shooting attack on four Miami-Dade police officers, is the half-brother of a notorious mass murderer and fugitive from justice, a half-brother of both men said.
Keith LaBeet, who described his family's extensive connections in a telephone interview from his home in St. Thomas, said he was in shock Thursday night as he watched television news reports from Miami about the massive manhunt.
''This thing is all over the news and I don't know what's going on,'' Keith LaBeet said. ``I'm watching the news right now and this looks crazy.''
''I just hope what they're saying isn't true and that he's innocent,'' said Labeet, who said he had met his half brother only about twice.
Shawn Sherwin Labeet, 25, is now on the run from Miami-Dade police after allegedly shooting four police officers, killing one. Keith LaBeet said Shawn is the half-brother of Ishmael LaBeet, who was implicated in eight slayings at a St. Croix resort in 1972, a crime known in the Virgin Islands as the Fountain Valley Massacre.
''We're all half-brothers. ... What can I say? My father got around,'' said Keith. ``There's a lot of us .... Shawn is one of the younger ones.''
Shawn Labeet was not yet born in 1972 when Ishmael LaBeet and four associates killed eight people at a St. Croix resort, Carambola.
The five -- all dressed in fatigues -- sprang out of the bushes at the Rockefeller-owned Fountain Valley golf course in St. Croix and sprayed the dining area with bullets.
According to newspaper accounts of the 1972 massacre, the attackers rounded up as many as 15 people into a nearby patio. Four Miami residents were among them. Eight were ordered to kneel in a circle and systematically shot to death with a shotgun and .45-caliber and 9mm pistols. The four from Miami, two couples vacationing together, were among the dead.
The five black robbers, who had screamed racial, anti-white insults during the massacre, according to witnesses, then fled with $731 from the cash register and the personal effects of the dead.
Thirteen years later, on New Year's Eve, 1985, Ishmael LaBeet overpowered guards from the Virgin Islands Department of Corrections who were escorting him on a flight from St. Croix to New York.
LaBeet forced the American Airlines flight with 198 people aboard to divert to Havana, Cuba, where he was taken off the plane by Cuban authorities. The plane later made the flight to New York with the rest of the passengers.
Ishmael LaBeet remains a fugitive, and his crime still resonates with locals to this day.
''I watched the news and immediately remembered Fountain Valley,'' said Eric Hansen, a retired local police officer who lives in St. Croix and investigated the Fountain Valley case. ''I'm pretty sure they're related,'' he added of Shawn and Ishmael LaBeet.
Said Keith LaBeet: ``Fountain Valley is something we don't really talk about.''
He said saw Ishmael LaBeet ''way back sometime in jail,'' and me this half-brother Shawn when Shawn was about 11 or 12.
''We don't know each other that well,'' said Keith. ``But I never knew him to be a problem ... he was always really quiet.''
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%>
Tell a friend
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'sets variables
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sendmail.To = email
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sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
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'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
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%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
