Two agents were shot and killed and three wounded while serving a warrant at a Sunrise home Tuesday morning, the FBI confirmed Tuesday morning. After barricading himself in the home for several hours, the suspected gunman is believed to have shot and killed himself, one law-enforcement source said.
Sunrise police said the suspect, a man suspected of child pornography possession, had holed up in his home at an apartment complex at 10100 Reflections Blvd. West. Nob Hill Road is closed in both directions from Northwest 44th Street to Oakland Park Boulevard.
“Two wounded agents were transported to hospital and are in stable condition,” the FBI said in a statement. The statement did not address the condition of the third agent. The victims appeared to have been taken to the trauma unit at Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale. Dozen of police officers from area agencies were already gathered outside by 11 a.m.
The shooting happened around 6 a.m. The child pornography case was being investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by federal prosecutors in Fort Lauderdale.
When the FBI child-porn squad arrived at the Sunrise residence on Tuesday morning, the agents were carrying out a routine search warrant to seize the suspect’s computer and other evidence, according to law enforcement sources.
The FBI obtained the internet protocol address for the suspect’s computer from an internet service provider and then matched that with the suspect’s physical address. Depending on the evidence found on the suspect’s home, the FBI and federal prosecutors would have likely filed a criminal complaint charging him with some type of child pornography charge, sources said.
DEADLY DAY
Tuesday’s shootings of the FBI agents may rival the deadliest in the bureau’s history — a bloody shootout between a group of agents and a pair of bank robbers in South Miami-Dade nearly 35 years ago.
Killed in that confrontation were special agents Ben Grogan and Jerry Dove. Grogan, 53, a two-decade veteran nicknamed The Doctor, was one year shy of retirement when he died. The “Miami Shootout” — which left five other agents wounded and the two suspects dead the morning of April 11,1986 — was a defining moment in the FBI’s history. It prompted the bureau to make sure all agents were better armed, replacing .38-caliber revolvers with 9mm semi-automatic handguns.
Tuesday morning’s raid was also reminiscent of the 2011 fatal shootings of two Miami-Dade police detectives while serving a warrant at a home in Miami. A murder suspect named Johnny Simms s fatally shot detectives Amanda Haworth and Roger Castillo, before he was shot dead by another officer.
In 2004, Broward Sheriff’s Detective Todd Fatta was fatally shot when a task force of officers was attempting to serve a child-porn search warrant at a home in Fort Lauderdale. His family later sued the police agency, saying Fatta would not have been shot had the department deployed the better-armed tactical SWAT unit.
This developing story will be updated.
Miami Herald Statt Writer Charles Rabin contributed to this story.
Source: Miami Herald