Bullets fly, no one hurt, in South Beach shootout

MIAMI BEACH — Serif Anlar was inside the Cafe South Beach deli just before 1 a.m. Tuesday when he heard more than two dozen shots.

From his vantage point, Anlar said, a group of men on the sidewalk on Fifth Street in front of the café began firing at another group on Ocean Drive at the Fifth and Ocean intersection. Gunfire was returned.

S o me o f t he shoot e r s , Anlar said, ran north in an alley between the deli and a Walgreens, while the other group jumped into a black sedan and took off south on Ocean.

“I’m still shocked,” Anlar said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. And I’m from Turkey.”

A surveillance video of the shooting at the restau- rant shows a group of men walking past, then turning toward another group. Bullets can be seen flying in zigzags across the screen as the men scramble for safety.

Remarkably, none of the shots hit anyone. A wall outside the deli was hit as well as the side of the Walgreens on the corner of Fifth and Collins Avenue.

At the same time Anlar was witnessing the shooting, a Miami Beach cop working a case near the street corner heard the gunfire and saw a car take off, a source familiar with the case said.

A few minutes later, that officer observed the vehicle again and gave chase with a group of Miami Beach cops.

At some point along the MacArthur Causeway headed to Miami, t wo guns were tossed from the car. Cops found those weapons. Then, in Miami, at least four men bailed out of the car.

Two of them were caught and taken into custody along with another man near the shooting site.

It wasn’t clear Tuesday if Miami or Miami Beach police c aptured the men who ditched the sedan.

No arrests had been made by Tuesday mid-afternoon, b u t Mi a mi B e a c h p o l i c e spokesman Ernesto Rodri- guez said police expect to charge one of the men being interviewed.

So far, there’s no explanation yet for what started the shootout.

“It’s horrible,” said Cafe South Beach deli owner Saba Doksoz as the deli, which closes at 2 a.m., opened for its breakfast business around 8 a.m. “This is the first time anything like this has happened in 15 years.”