Miami Schools Chief: 'My Heart is Saddened. My Mind is Angered'

MIAMI – Saying "my heart is saddened," as he addressed reporters, schools superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho decried the violence threatening Miami-Dade County youth after three ninth graders were shot on Friday afternoon and a transportation van carrying 14 students was fired upon during the morning commute to school.

On Friday afternoon Carvalho visited the scene of the second incident that touched his students in a seven-hour period. Three ninth graders were shot as they walked home from Miami Carol City Senior High School in Miami Gardens.

Carvalho said that the teens were shot shortly after classes were dismissed at 2:30 p.m. He said that the injuries do not appear to be life-threatening.

"If this is not a wake-up call to the entire community, I don't know what would be," he said. "My heart is saddened. My mind is angered over what we witnessed and went through today."

Earlier, the district's top educator visited the scene of a morning incident that occurred in the Brownsville area, essentially an unincorporated swath of Miami-Dade County that is just beyond the boundaries of the city of Miami.

He told reporters: “Fourteen children by the grace of God – today’s miracle – none of them were harmed" and added that such incidents "cannot become the new normal. This is highly abnormal."

Miami-Dade police told Patch that the first incident involved two transportation vans that were struck at approximately 8:30 a.m. along NW 24 Avenue and 46 Street.

One of the vehicles was carrying 14 students headed to nearby Brownsville Middle School, which was subsequently placed on lockdown for a time. The other was carrying senior citizens from Miami Jewish Health Systems.

The van carrying the students was hit four times, according to a spokeswoman for Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

Police said that the shots appeared to come from a pellet gun or BB gun in that case. But the force of the shots was strong enough to knock out windows in both vehicles.

"It was two different buses, one with elderly and the other one with children from a school," explained Miami-Dade police Detective Daniel Ferrin, who said that two juveniles were being questioned by detectives.

Ferrin added that it was not clear at this point in the investigation if the vehicles were specifically targeted.

"Maybe they were just shooting and happened to hit the buses," he said.