Hialeah, FL: Man dead, officer injured in Hialeah police-involved shooting

Hialeah police shot and killed a man who was armed with a flare gun Saturday afternoon.

Luis Enrique Nuñez, 48, was involved with a domestic dispute with his wife said Hialeah police spokesman Carl Zogby.

The police responded to a 9-1-1 call at approximately 3 p.m., Zogby said. They were responding to a call from either Nuñez or his wife, which was followed by multiple calls from neighbors reporting that there was a man “running around the building with guns in the hallway.”

When the officers arrived, Nuñez was “in some sort of crisis,” Zogby said. “They were not able to calm him down.”

Both the police and suspect fired their weapons, Zogby said.

“We don’t know who fired first,” he said.

One officer sustained an injury to his finger. It is not clear whether the injury came from the flare gun or a bullet.

Zogby said that the officers were forced to shoot Nuñez when he did not back down.

“Flare guns are extremely lethal,” he said, explaining that “if it hits you, it could theoretically burn through you.”

Made up of chemicals and fuel, flare guns are usually used to signal for help. Because they burn for several minutes, police consider them deadly weapons.

Nuñez, who was a truck driver, often brought the emergency flare home from work, according to his sister Elsa.

Elsa Nuñez said her brother has a history of alcohol abuse and was likely drunk and on drugs at the time. She begged the police to let her help him.

“I said ‘please, that’s my brother,’” she said. “‘Don’t shoot him. Let me talk to him, because he knows me, he knows the family, he will react, he knows me.’”

She said that the police threatened to arrest her if she did not back off. She said she arrived on scene because Nuñez had called their mother worried, as he tended to do when intoxicated.

While it is unclear who called the police first on Saturday, Elsa Nuñez said her brother had a history of calling 9-1-1 when he was in his “paranoid” state.

“He called the police because he thought the police were going to help him,” she said. “They murdered my brother. They shot him eight times in the chest.”

Nuñez has been arrested 13 times in Florida. Charges have included attempted murder of a police officer, cocaine possession and battery. His most recent arrest was in September 2008 for battery and kidnapping/false imprisonment.