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On April 11, 1986, FBI agents engaged in a shootout against two serial criminals in Pinecrest. Referred to as one of the FBI’s deadliest shootouts in history, two agents were killed while five agents sustained serious injuries. As Special Agent and supervisor of the squad, Gordon McNeill fought for his life and those in his squad, just a few blocks away his daughter Suzanne Farwell (née McNeill) sat in the newspaper room at Miami Palmetto Senior High about to begin her day as Feature Editor on the newspaper. Upon entering the classroom, yearbook students who were out selling ads during the prior period began describing a shootout just a few blocks away.
In 1986, a series of bank robberies, armored car ambushes and murders plagued the South Florida community. William Russell Matix and Michael Lee Platt would seek out solo target practice shooters in the Everglades, kill them, steal their cars and use them to carry out their crimes. To many, Matix and Platt appeared as unsuspicious local business partners who ran a landscaping business. They had even stopped by to shop in the mall along the back entrance of the shootout, Suniland South Shopping Center.
Cheryl Oswald, owner of Mainzer’s Deli recalls the two men and what happened that day.
“At the time my mother-in-law, Inge, was at the hair salon here,” said Oswald. “They used to come in the shop and order sandwiches here. From what I understood, they were very nice.”
While Matix and Platt kept evading capture, the FBI had been following the stolen cars and planned to run plates along US1 to catch the criminals. On April 11, FBI Agents Benjamin Grogan and Jerry Dove spotted a stolen black Chevrolet Monte Carlo on US1 with the correct plate and radioed for backup from other agents in their unit: Edmundo Mireles Jr., John F. Hanlon Jr., Richard A. Manauzzi, Gilbert M. Orrantia and Gordon McNeill.
When Grogan and Dove attempted to pull the car over, the criminals sped away. A car chase ensued on backstreets and the five other agents met on 82nd Ave, where the chase ended as three agents’ cars steered the Monte Carlo into a tree, trapping Matix and Platt.
The two criminals opened fire and began a gunfight between them and the FBI, with more than 150 shots exchanged. At Miami Palmetto Senior High, Gordon Mc Neill’s daughter Suzanne sat in math — her period before newspaper — hearing what she thought were fireworks. Suzanne and the other students did not know that what they heard was one of the bloodiest shootouts in FBI history. Later, in newspaper class, she knew.
“I figured out what happened,” Suzanne says. “So I got up and I used the phone in the classroom to call the FBI office to ask or try to get my dad on the phone. Then someone on the phone said they were sending an agent to come pick me up and I knew what had happened and I was just like ‘oh my God’.”
Suzanne was taken to the hospital to see her father, yet this was not the first time Suzanne saw her father that day. Just a few hours before, they had conversed at home before his morning stakeout.
“I had to go home and change.” she says, recalling a clothing mishap. “It was strange because my father was home and normally he would be in the office. I said ‘what are you doing’ and he told me because I knew about the case…he was keeping me and my family up to date on the whole case. My dad said ‘well it’s a Friday and they always have hit on Fridays and they always hit before noon. So we’re going to go and meet at this one bank on US1.”
As the supervisor of the squad, Gordon had initially planned on delegating banks for different officers to surveil.
At the shootout, Gordon shot Matix — which played a key role in apprehending the criminals before they died — yet he was injured in the process. After being airlifted to the hospital, doctors found bullets through Gordon’s spine paralyzing him from the waist down.
It took about one year for Gordon to relearn how to walk and he continued to have long-term damage resulting from his injuries. As for the other agents on the scene, Manauzzi received serious wounds, Orrantia and Risner were pinned in their car on the other side of the street wounding Orrantia and Mireles and John Hanlon suffered injuries as they came under high-powered fire. Agents Grogan and Dove fired at the criminals at close range; both agents were tragically killed.
“It was so sad because the two men who died, Jerry Dove, was like 30,” Suzanne said. “He was the youngest agent on the squad and then Ben Grogan was about to retire. It was just so sad and tragic.”
Many of the FBI agents involved sustained serious injuries and struggled to fight since they were outgunned. According to Suzanne, Agent Mireles saved her father’s life as he swung his uninjured arm to shoot the criminals before they could run Gordon over in Grogan and Dove’s car.
Following a tragedy, The FBI has an Incident Response Team that studies positive or negative incidents to look at what they could do better in the future. While reviewing the case, the FBI determined that their agents had inadequate weapons to match the caliber of guns that the criminals possessed. The shootout served as a catalyst for the FBI to re-evaluate their weaponry and update their protocol.
Manuel Ortega, a now retired FBI agent, joined the squad involved in the shootout six months after it happened.
“After the shootout, they determined that revolvers were not the way to go,” Ortega said. “And when I first came out of the Academy, I was issued a 357 Magnum revolver. And then a couple of years afterwards, I was transitioned into a semi-automatic pistol, as an outcome of what we learned from that shoot out in Miami-Dade.”
The movie of the shootout, “In The Line of Duty: The FBI Murders,” depicts the agents stopping to reload the chamber after each round while the criminals consistently shot with semi-automatic weapons.
“I’m really happy and proud about [the new protocol] given the caliber of weapons that most of these criminals have, in order for law enforcement to have a fair chance to protect the community and themselves,” Suzanne said.
In the beginning of joining the squad, Ortega witnessed some of the impacts the shootout brought to the men.
“It was sad because Gordo (Gordon) was still walking around…you could see in his step he couldn’t walk very well,” Ortega said. “Ed Mireles, since he had had his arm almost destroyed, he had administrative duties; he was on the night shift radio.”
In April 2015, the FBI Miami Field Office and U.S. General Services Administration officially named its FBI Miami headquarters the ‘Benjamin P. Grogan and Jerry L. Dove Federal Building.’ Former President Barack Obama signed the legislation designating the building and former FBI Director James B. Comey attended the grand opening.
While many do not frequently visit the FBI headquarters, the common side street in Pinecrest remains a local cut through to this day. Citizens remember the history of that road 37 years later.
“It was quite traumatic at the time but out of bad things, good things always arise,” Suzanne said. “The love and support that I got from people and the way that it made that impact on law enforcement weapons, and just my father’s heroism that day. I am very proud of him and what he did that day and how he and all of them put themselves on the line with their lives. Two of them paid the ultimate price. I do feel proud and consider him and all of them that day heroes.”
Samantha Elkins is a student at Miami Palmetto Senior High.
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