A verbal fight between two large groups on the Hollywood Broadwalk quickly turned physical and then escalated into a spray of bullets, with at least one of three gunmen intentionally trying to kill someone, an arrest warrant released Monday says.
The three alleged gunmen in the Memorial Day shooting that injured nine people are Lionel Jean Charles Jr., 18; Ariel Cardahn Paul, 16; and Jordan Burton, 15.
Charles Jr. was arrested Monday at 1:30 p.m., the police department said. Paul and Burton were arrested over the weekend.
They sprinted away from the crime scene, hid guns, jumped over fences, stripped their clothes and evaded police for days until several people identified them in surveillance video and local and federal officers found and arrested them.
The warrant released by the police department Monday does not say what started the fight between the two groups of men and teenagers, but surveillance video showed both of the cliques walking near 400 N. Broadwalk where they met, the warrant said.
They then walked north past Margaritaville, with the group who would ultimately be shot at slightly ahead of the first group, which Charles Jr., Paul and Burton were with.
The second pack walked toward the sand near Johnson Street where the first group confronted them and the fight started, the warrant said. Video then showed Charles Jr. shoot someone in the second group, and Burton and Paul both fired at the group and into the crowd of unsuspecting bystanders.
Two of the nine victims were among the second group, with one shot several times in the upper torso and the other shot in the right calf. The other seven were bystanders, uninvolved with those who were fighting, according to the warrant.
The names of the nine victims and all among the two groups aside from Charles Jr., Paul and Burton are redacted in the warrant.
Both groups split in different directions after the shooting. Officers caught up with six of the people who were in the second group near Connecticut Street and North Broadwalk, the warrant said. They said they didn’t know who shot at them.
Three others, also part of the second group, were found at Nevada Street and North Ocean Drive. One of them said a man he knew as “LJ,” later identified as Charles Jr., was the first to shoot, the warrant said — first at one of his intended victims, into the group he was fighting with and randomly into the crowd of innocent bystanders.
The three alleged gunmen and others from their group fled to a building in the 1500 block of North Ocean Drive, where officers later found two guns hidden underneath a stairwell. A third gun was tossed in bushes behind a tiki hut nearby, the warrant said.
Charles Jr., Paul and Burton then all fled north, jumping over a fence in the 300 block of Arthur Street, the warrant said. Charles Jr. shed his bright yellow hoodie soon after and threw it into bushes on Cleveland Street as an officer in a vehicle pursuit of him turned east and passed him. He wouldn’t be caught for a week.
Officers met with the victim whom Charles Jr. shot in the chest at Memorial Regional Hospital. He said the group the gunmen were with started to jump his group, and Charles Jr. shot him in the chest when he tried to intervene, the warrant said.
Various people identified Charles Jr., Paul and Burton in Crime Stoppers tips and in interviews with detectives, the warrant said. Charles Jr. is allegedly the first suspect who shot one of the victims “with the intent to murder.”
Burton and Paul were identified as the second and third suspects who shot at the other group, injuring the victims. The detective who wrote the warrant said he believed the three worked together “and their intent was to murder” the first victim and other people with the second group.
Charles Jr., Paul and Burton each face one count of first-degree attempted murder, eight counts of second-degree attempted murder and one count of carrying a concealed firearm, Hollywood Police said.
Charles Jr. is held in the Broward Main Jail. The minor boys are in the juvenile facility.
Angie DiMichele can be reached at adimichele@sunsentinel.com, 754-971-0194 and on Twitter @angdimi.