A gunman fatally shot a 12-year-old boy and wounded a man before turning the gun on himself inside a South Florida convenience store in an apparently random attack, sheriff’s officials said Friday.
Broward County Sheriff’s deputies said Darren Rosenthal, 29, shot a man sitting inside a car outside the Dania Beach 7-Eleven at about 11 p.m. Thursday. He then went inside the suburban Fort Lauderdale store and killed the boy. He then killed himself.
The names of the boy and the wounded man were not released. The man was taken to the hospital, but his condition was also not released.
“Detectives do not believe there is any connection between the gunman and the victims; this does appear to be a random act,” sheriff’s spokesman Carey Codd said at a Friday news conference. “There does not appear to be a connection between the two victims.”
Store worker Maximo Limas said Rosenthal gave no warning before he started shooting.
The wounded man “was chilling in his car, minding his business. Pow, shot him in the neck,” Limas told Miami’s WFOR-TV. The boy, he said, was also an innocent victim.
“The kid just wanted to buy ice cream. That’s all he was doing,” Limas said.
Miami-Dade County court records show Rosenthal had several misdemeanor drug- and alcohol-related arrests about eight years ago.
An investigation into the shooting is continuing and detectives are asking anyone with information to come forward.
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