Arrest made in case of man fatally shot in car
HALLANDALE BEACH — A 23-year-old man is accused of fatally shooting a Hollywood man who was driving down a street with his two teenage children.
Hallandale Beach police say Michael Gardner shot and killed 38-year-old Ollie Mingo about 9 p.m. on May 17, five days before his 39th birthday.
Officers found Mingo dead behind the wheel of his car, which had crashed into a light pole in the 800 block of Foster Road. He had been shot in the back of the head.
Hallandale Beach detectives tracked Gardner to Miami and arrested him about 9 a.m. Friday with the help of the Miami Dade Police Department.
Information about what led police to Gardner was not available Friday.
On the night of the shooting, Mingo’s son, 14, and daughter, 17, got out of the car and ran north toward OB Johnson Park, where a Hallandale Beach police officer met them and called for more officers. Before the shooting, Mingo was driving his Chevrolet Lumina north along 800 Northwest Seventh Avenue. He was slowed down by people dancing along the street, his boss said.
“The kids told us he stopped the car and they watched [the dancers], and as he drove away he got shot in the back of the head,” Scott Stephens, owner of Battery Sales USA in North Miami, where Mingo worked as a warehouse manager, said several days after the killing.
Mingo’s teenagers were too traumatized to attend their father’s funeral.
His 11-year-old daughter was not in the car that night.
sbryan@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4554