According to a witness, the shooting broke out during a karaoke night event at the Sandbar Sports Grill in Cutler Bay, Florida. Zachary Ramos told WPLG-TV that two men got into an argument over whose turn it was to sing on stage next.
The argument turned into a brawl that spilled into the parking lot outside the bar, Ramos said. Then both of the men pulled out guns and started firing.
“One of them was like, ‘No, it’s my turn,’ and the other one was like, ‘No, it’s my turn,’ and it just went into a big brawl from there,” said Ramos. “When we were running away from the shots, like bullets were flying past us. We could hear this zip coming past our heads and it was just madness.”
The witness said he heard between 10 and 20 gunshots as he rushed to protect his friends, his dog and himself.
Three people were injured in the shooting, Miami-Dade police confirmed to local outlets. Officers first spotted a man and a woman with gunshot wounds, who were transported to Jackson South Medical Center in critical condition. Another man suffering from a gunshot wound was found several blocks away and hospitalized in stable condition.
Police are still searching for the suspects, who fled the scene of the crime. Newsweek reached out to the Miami-Dade Police Department for comment.
Florida law prohibits carrying a firearm in any part of an establishment that is licensed to sell alcoholic beverages. Nonetheless, the Pulse nightclub in Orlando became the site of one of America’s deadliest shootings in 2016, leaving 49 people dead and 53 injured.
Since then, shootings have continued to afflict the state’s bars and nightclubs. In July, a hotel employee was shot and killed by a man who was denied entry into a nightclub in Miami Beach.
In June, five people were injured during a shooting at The Pelican’s Nest nightclub in Pensacola.
After security guards kicked another man out of a Miami bar in January, he returned with a gun and shot four people.
Gun control activists disrupted a live event featuring Florida Governor Ron DeSantis earlier this year, demanding his attention to gun violence.
“Governor DeSantis, we’re losing 100 people a day due to gun violence,” activist Maxwell Alejandro Frost told the governor in a clip that went viral online. “Governor, we need you to take action on gun violence.”
