Manhunt for banquet hall shooters continues

A manhunt continued into Memorial Day for three masked suspects who opened fire early Sunday morning outside a Miami banquet hall, killing two men and wounding 21 others, in a shooting authorities said had spread terror and grief through their communities.

That anguish was reinforced Monday by a grieving father who interrupted a news conference just as the Miami-Dade Police Department’s director, Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez III, was decrying the weekend’s gun violence and appealing for the community’s help in tracking down the shooters.

“You killed my kid with no reason,” the distraught man yelled out as he was escorted away from cameras. Police would later confirm that the man, Clayton Dillard, is the father of one of two 26-year-old men who were gunned down outside the banquet hall that was hosting a rap concert.

“That is the pain that you see. That is the pain that affects our community right there before you,” Ramirez said.

On Monday, police released a snippet from surveillance video that showed a white SUV driving into an alley at the strip mall housing the El Mula Banquet Hall in northwest Miami-Dade, near Hialeah. The video shows three people getting out of the vehicle, one gripping a handgun, while the other two carried what police described as “assault-style rifles.”

That’s when the gunmen sprayed bullets indiscriminately into the crowd, even though police said the assailants had specific targets in mind.