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Old April 2, 2008, 10:29 PM   #1
stephen426
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Where are all the mall ninjas when you need one???

Today, April 2, 2008, police locked down the Dolphin Mall in Miami after four fugitives, suspected in a home invasion chose the mall as hide out.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/brea...ry/480066.html

Quote:
Dolphin Mall reopened for business at 6 p.m. Wednesday after an hours-long search for two suspected home invaders who hid at the popular west Miami-Dade mall proved fruitless.

Earlier in the day, the four fugitives fanned out through the mall -- one dashing into the Marshall's, the other ducking into the Old Navy -- after a home invasion in the area.

Two were captured; two others managed to elude police, who were not taking any chances and decided to shut down the mall.

It remained closed as of 5 p.m. as police dogs searched each store, Miami-Dade police said.

All customers were ordered to leave and their cars were searched as they drove out past a roadblock.

Here's how it all began, according to police on the scene:

Four armed men in ski masks broke into a home at Northwest 10th Street and 129th Avenue. After the home invasion, they took off in a white minivan.

The occupant of the home took off after them in a green car.

The van stopped at the Dolphin Mall, 11401 NW 12th St., dropping off at least two of the occupants. They dashed into the mall.

A suspect was reportedly spotted on the roof of Dave and Buster's eatery.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue was called to treat the person who was pistol whipped. Within an hour, patrons were being allowed to exit the mall.

After dropping off the two fugitives, the van continued on its journey, still followed by the green car.

Patrons at a bar toward the middle of the mall remained oblivious to the manhunt.

But soon the incident left the usually busy mall deserted.

''It killed business,'' said a bartender at a mall eatery.

Customers said the incident chilled their afternoon at the mall.

At an afternoon press conference, Miami-Dade police spokesman Alvaro Zabaleta said police had two men in custody.

Nobody was injured, he said, adding that a possible victim of the home invasion who had chased the suspects to the mall was taken to a local hospital for treatment.

The search was on for two others in a white van.

Earlier in the morning, a group of men wearing ski masks was seen running out of a home on the corner of Northwest 129th Avenue and 10th Street.

Minutes earlier, Jose Cabrera, who lives on the block, had received a call from another neighbor, alerting him of a suspicious van circling the neighborhood.

''I knew there was something suspicious going on when my neighbor called me to tell me about the van. I took a look outside and saw four guys in ski masks running out of the house,'' Cabrera said.

On a street lined with groomed lawns and ornamental mailboxes, the one-story peach house where the home invasion took place stands out. Christmas lights and decorations are still hanging, and the yard is overgrown with weeds. A pole-and-tarp car cover is set up in the small front yard.

Wednesday at about 2:30 p.m., a woman who neighbors said lived in the house where the robbery took place left the scene in an unmarked police car.

Andy Martin, who lives next door to the house where the home invasion took place, said he hopes nothing else goes down on his block in the near future.

''Hopefully, there's not going to be any retaliation,'' Martin said. ``It didn't seem like a simple robbery.''

Martin said in the 15 years he's lived on the street, he hasn't seen anything quite like Wednesday's robbery and chase.

''The guys drove around the block three times. My dog was barking,'' Martin said. ``Then there was a guy standing here, like looking out, on our driveway.''
The company I work for has 7 restaurants in this mall. I was off at another location today and missed all the excitement. The good thing is that no one was hurt and two of the bad guys were caught. The bad thing is that we lost sales from 7 restaurants and it is currently spring break. The restaurants still have to pay rent and salaries even though no sales were generated. I wish we had some mall ninjas present that could have just swooped down and chopped them up!
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Old April 3, 2008, 12:11 AM   #2
IZinterrogator
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Well, I guess we have confirmed that Gecko45's unnamed mall is not the Dolphin Mall in the Miami-Dade area.
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Old April 3, 2008, 11:47 AM   #3
stephen426
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Just to keep this tactical, what do you think of the police department's actions? By closing the mall and not permitting any one in or out, a hostage sitation could have ensued. I'm not saying that they should just let the home invaders go, but public safety needs to be a consideration. If the bad guys were cornered and a fire fight ensued, there could easily been some collateral damage. Eventually they forced everyone to leave, but that was a few hours into the ordeal.

That mall happens to have a Bass Pro Shop. Imagine if the bad guys went in there! The would have practically limitless ammo.
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Old April 3, 2008, 02:24 PM   #4
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Did anyone look in the food court?
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Old April 3, 2008, 02:52 PM   #5
AmesJainchill
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I think I would have done pretty much the same thing the police did.

Watch the exits--including the employee or service exits--make sure I knew who was leaving the mall, get everyone--customers and employees--out of the mall, sweep and clear the place.

And make sure that the employees were all properly identified and whatnot, so one of them wasn't KO'ed and their uniform stolen or anything.

Oh, and check the roof, also. They might hide up there.

I dunno, maybe I'm just paranoid like that.
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Old April 3, 2008, 06:26 PM   #6
MikeG
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Quote:
On a street lined with groomed lawns and ornamental mailboxes, the one-story peach house where the home invasion took place stands out. Christmas lights and decorations are still hanging, and the yard is overgrown with weeds. A pole-and-tarp car cover is set up in the small front yard.
The perps were from the home owner's association.
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Old April 3, 2008, 09:15 PM   #7
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The Mall Ninjas were still duct-taping M1As to their backs.
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Old April 3, 2008, 09:29 PM   #8
protectedbyglock
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The first thing I thought when I read this was the same thing stephen said. Collateral damage could be really bad in a shopping mall.
Just think how badly this could have been if the police DID find them.
Bad place to have a shoot-out.
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Old April 3, 2008, 09:52 PM   #9
stephen426
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AmesJainchill
Oh, and check the roof, also. They might hide up there.
Alright buster... Turn yourself in! Incidentally, that is where they caught them. I'm not quite sure how they got up there considering the hoops I have to jump through to get roof access to change exhaust belts.

Quote:
Watch the exits--including the employee or service exits--make sure I knew who was leaving the mall, get everyone--customers and employees--out of the mall, sweep and clear the place.
As for watching all the exits, thats pretty hard to do considering this mall is pretty darn big. There are the regular entrances, emergency exits, and many store specific exits with direct access to the outside. Four of our restaurants have exits that go directly to the outside.

Quote:
Originally Posted by brickeyee
Did anyone look in the food court?
Yes... They looked everywhere. They brought dogs in to look for the suspects too. One of my buddies got drawn on when he walked out of the bathroom. Good thing he already emptied his bladder already or else he would have had to change his pants!
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Old April 3, 2008, 10:42 PM   #10
AmesJainchill
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Alright buster... Turn yourself in! Incidentally, that is where they caught them. I'm not quite sure how they got up there considering the hoops I have to jump through to get roof access to change exhaust belts.
You're an HVAC technician?

Quote:
As for watching all the exits, thats pretty hard to do considering this mall is pretty darn big. There are the regular entrances, emergency exits, and many store specific exits with direct access to the outside. Four of our restaurants have exits that go directly to the outside.
Yeah...you'd need to have a lot of men, and there's always the chance the perps would be able to disable or kill the officers. 20 squad cars?

But, then, you do have the mall security to help out. A helicopter would help some here, I think.
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Old April 3, 2008, 10:54 PM   #11
stephen426
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You're an HVAC technician?
Nope... just handy. I learn to repair a lot of easy things since it beats shutting down on a busy weekend r getting raped by technicians charging weekend rates.

Quote:
But, then, you do have the mall security to help out. A helicopter would help some here, I think.
You give WAY too much credit to mall security. They can maybe help a little by tracking the bad guys from the security cameras... but thats about it. We don't have any uber-cool tactical mall ninjas as security officers. Some of them are pretty cool though.

A chopper would be useless unless pursuing a vehicle. It is darn near impossible to see faces from above.
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Old April 5, 2008, 03:04 AM   #12
AmesJainchill
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I just was thinking that the more sets of eyes there are outside the mall, the better.
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Old April 9, 2008, 07:25 PM   #13
Recon7
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maybe the mall ninja, dressed all in black covered in tactical gear, was detained by police first and later released as he was guilty only of looking stupid.
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Old April 10, 2008, 09:21 AM   #14
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Quote:
Well, I guess we have confirmed that Gecko45's unnamed mall is not the Dolphin Mall in the Miami-Dade area.
Not necessarily- the press story is a cover-up.

They had to close the mall to buy time to dig ~800 7.62x51mm NATO bullets from the mall security FN-FALs and M1As out of the walls of the Build-a-Bear Workshop... not to mention vacuuming up all of the fluff.
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