Police say at least three men are dead – two with ties to Coconut Grove – in a bloody turf war. No arrests have been made.
Sabrina Rolle last saw her son in the rearview mirror as she drove south from her Fort Lauderdale home. On that Tuesday afternoon, Demonte was behind her, at the wheel of a silver 2003 Toyota Camry with a bad tire.
“I told him not to drive on that tire,” Rolle said.
But Demonte Poitier, 24, had a plan to meet his girlfriend in Coconut Grove, the Miami neighborhood where he’d grown up. He was determined to go.
Within hours Poitier was dead, not because of a bad tire, but because of a fusillade of gunshots that rang out just after 8 p.m. on Feb. 13 as he sat in the Camry in the 3300 block of Plaza Street. Pictures of evidence markers from the scene show that as many as 40 shots were fired.
“From what I’m hearing, he was set up,” said Rolle.
Poitier is not the only young Coconut Grove native gunned down recently in what Miami police say is a long-running and deadly turf war that may have historical roots in the drug trade but has morphed into more-lucrative credit card fraud and cybercrime.
Just three weeks after Poitier’s death, another Coral Gables High School alumnus, 23-year-old Rasaad Sawyer, was killed in Miami’s Brownsville neighborhood when unknown shooters opened fire on a car in which he was traveling. A 20-year-old woman in the car was wounded.
Nearby, another man, Mackenson J. Paul, 31, was found dead of gunshot wounds in a second car, police said.
No arrests have been made in connection with these drive-by homicides, and police have not said that either Poitier or Sawyer was the intended target of the shooters.
But the shootings are related, according to Dan Kerr, police commander of the Coconut Grove neighborhood. “This is not random,” he said.
According to Kerr, the violence stems from squabbles within loosely-knit gangs or crews, called the 7 Gang, involved in “tax fraud, skimming credit cards, Covid-era stuff [where they] can make more money than in violent crimes. It’s hard to catch them.”
Those involved “are all very young, under 25,” said Kerr. “They’re all from south of [Miami-Dade] county…the Grove, South Miami, Coral Gables, south Dade.”
“They’re shooting at each other to the point that eventually they’re going to kill each other,” added Kerr. “That’s what’s going to happen. There is so little regard for life or the future.”
In the aftermath of Poitier’s death, Miami police teamed up with federal agents to conduct raids on three locations, including two in the Grove – an apartment on Grand Avenue and a house on Frow Avenue, according to Kerr. Several guns, including high-powered rifles, were seized, Kerr said.
Miami detectives and FBI agents working the case have declined to comment. Nor have they said that either Poitier or Sawyer was a gang member. In the meantime, the families of the two young Grove men gunned down have been left to mourn.
Sabrina Rolle was told her son, who was known as Red and had worked as a security guard, was hit by at least 10 bullets.
“He was a very kind-hearted human being and gave a lot to the ones he cared for,” she wrote in a GoFundMe page. “He had the sweetest smile and even more kindred spirits. Our hearts are broken more than one could imagine.”
In an obituary published on the Angels of Paradise Mortuary website, Sawyer was described as “a gentle genuine soul always laughing, giving out hugs and being a leader and teacher amongst his peers.”
He was also remembered as a talented wide receiver on the Coral Gables High football team in 2019 after first playing for the Coconut Grove Knight Riders and the Tamiami Colts. Nicknamed “Tounk,” Sawyer attended Copiah-Lincoln Community College in Mississippi and later worked for a local contractor, according to the obituary.
Funeral services for both men have been held.
(Hank Sanchez-Resnik contributed to this report).
