A 31-year-old South Florida career offender is accused of shooting his girlfriend and the mother of his child on Saturday and shooting a Sunrise Police officer in the leg as officers attempted to arrest him Tuesday in Fort Lauderdale, according to police.
Both the suspect and the Sunrise officer were shot on Tuesday shortly after 2:30 p.m. in the 200 block of Northwest 22nd Avenue as officers attempted to apprehend the suspect on the active warrant for the alleged Dec. 30 crimes, police said.
Romuliss Jarquives Hicks, 31, had an arrest warrant on charges of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm, carjacking with a firearm, convicted felon in possession of a firearm and violation of felony probation, according to the warrant the police department released Tuesday evening.
The suspect shot the officer in the leg, Sunrise Police Officer Victor Fortune said Tuesday afternoon shortly after the incident. Multiple officers shot back, hitting him, he said.
The police department in the news release did not say where the suspect was shot or identify any of the officers.
Both the officer and suspect were taken to Broward Health Medical Center in stable condition, Casey Liening, a Fort Lauderdale Police spokesperson, said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon. The girlfriend also survived.
On Dec. 30, officers responded to a shooting call at an undisclosed address shortly after 5:30 p.m. where they met with Hicks’ girlfriend who said he had shot her and stole her car, according to the warrant. The description of her stolen 2003 silver Mercury Sable was broadcast to law enforcement across Broward County. The car was found abandoned later Saturday night.
Hicks and his girlfriend had an argument on Friday, she told police, where Hicks took her cellphone from her. She took her infant daughter from their shared home and stayed the night at her stepmother’s house, the warrant said.
The girlfriend returned to the home she shares with Hicks to get supplies for the baby, and Hicks promised he wouldn’t be there. She found him hiding on the stairwell landing between the first and second floors, the warrant said.
Hicks chased her as she ran away and pulled her car keys from her and knocked her to the ground when he caught up, the warrant said. Hicks allegedly shot his girlfriend while standing over her on the ground.
The woman was shot in her upper arm and shoulder blade, the warrant said. She said the gun was pointed “directly at her upper torso and head as she moved side to side to avoid being shot,” according to the warrant. She said she remembered her ears ringing from the shots and feeling that she was going to be killed.
Witnesses told officers in the Dec. 30 shooting that they heard someone screaming for help and saw a man wearing a hoodie, standing over the victim before shooting at least twice, the warrant said. The man then hit a parked car as he was fleeing in the stolen car.
The stolen car was found abandoned in a shopping center parking lot in a neighboring city, though the warrant did not say which. Officers watched the area for hours for Hicks, but he did not return, the warrant said.
Surveillance cameras in the area recorded Hicks walking away from the vehicle, wearing different clothes and leaving behind the clothes witnesses reported seeing him in during Saturday’s shooting, the warrant said.
The 200 block of Northwest 22nd Avenue where Tuesday’s shootings happened is slightly west of Interstate 95, near the Broward Boulevard Tri-Rail station parking lot and the Broward Juvenile Detention Center. A parking lot in the area was cordoned off with crime scene tape as officers investigated.
Liening said Fort Lauderdale Police were not involved in the investigation or shootings, she said, and were not on scene when the shooting began. Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials will investigate, she said.
Hicks had not yet been booked into the Broward County jail as of Tuesday evening. The arrest warrant said he had been previously convicted of four felonies between 2014 and 2021, including robbery by sudden snatching, burglary, robbery with a firearm and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
He is considered a career offender and a habitual violent felony offender, the warrant said, and was actively on probation for robbery, set to end in 2032.
Authorities did not release any additional information about the shooting Tuesday.
Over 66,400 sworn law enforcement officers across the country were assaulted while on duty in 2022, with over 2,500 of them being in Florida, according to the most recent Federal Bureau of Investigation data released in October 2023. Of the total, just over 4% were assaulted by someone with a firearm.
The majority of officers who were assaulted in 2022, at about 29 percent, were responding to disturbance calls, like domestic-related issues and fights at bars, the FBI data said. Just over 18 percent were officers who were attempting other arrests.
At least 57 officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty in 2023, slightly less than the 59 who were feloniously killed in 2022. Firearms were used in the majority of the deaths at 76 percent. Sixteen of those who were killed were working an investigation or enforcement, such as a drug-related matter or a wanted person, according to FBI data — a 60 percent increase from the same time period in 2022.
Last month, suspects shot at a Fort Lauderdale Police officer’s car in Miami-Dade County as they investigated an armed robbery in Miami’s Design District neighborhood. Multiple bullets hit the officer’s car, but the officer was not injured. Officers did not shoot back.
In October 2021, Hollywood Police Officer Yandy Chirino was shot and killed by an 18-year-old suspect while responding to a call of a suspicious person in Emerald Hills.