For the first time, Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz is speaking about a deadly police-involved shooting from Saturday afternoon after a sheriff’s deputy shot and killed a 52-year-old mother of two children in her home.
Cordero-Stutz said deputies went to the woman’s Miami Gardens home to help her because she was in distress and said they did everything they could to help her until they were forced to take action.
The incident began around 4 p.m. when deputies responded to a call about a woman with a knife, reportedly cutting herself at her home near S.W. 55TH Ave. and N.W. 190th St.
The Sheriff’s Office said the woman, Karen Ivette Gomez, posed a threat to herself and others, and they used a taser, and then she was shot. She was taken to a hospital but died from her injuries.
Cordero-Stutz told CBS News Miami, “Unfortunately, this woman was in crisis. This was a very difficult call to begin with, and I think that we always go to these calls with every tool possible. We give our deputies every bit of training. We have a very high level of training to respond to these calls.”
“We have a crisis response unit,” she said. The unit provides special assistance to citizens experiencing a mental health crisis. “In this case, they were not involved. They were not assigned to the area at this time.”
She said, “With that said, deputies are assigned to these crises knowing they really want to go there to help, to really provide support. Unfortunately, as much as they try, sometimes the situation does not allow it. That is what happened in this case.”
“Now this is an open case, so I really can’t get in to the details,” she said. “But I will tell you that our deputies did everything they could in a difficult situation. Unfortunately, they had to take action. They live with this every day. They went there to help and still had to take deadly force and action. It’s hard. It is not easy.”
Family members told CBS News Miami that Gomez’s 12-year-old daughter was home and made the call for help. Gomez’s oldest daughter, who did not want to be identified, said she was on the phone with her younger sister when the incident happened.Â
She said “I heard two gunshots, two gunshots in a house with no gun. I don’t have a gun. My Dad is out of the country and it’s just my little sister and mom in the room.’
The family expressed deep frustration and confusion about the use of deadly force and the lack of information from authorities.
One family member said “That is insane and they’re not respecting us because we’re asking them and nobody knows…where is my sister?”
Assistant Sheriff Eric Garcia said this weekend “These are situations and calls for service in which our deputies are constantly training for situations with individuals that may be experiencing a mental health crisis and in this situation here they attempted to establish that dialogue with that individual but it was unsuccessful.”
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has opened an investigation in to the shooting, as is standard protocol whenever a deputy fires their weapon.