A 17-year-old from Miami has been booked into an adult detention facility on five felony charges, including two counts of attempted murder, stemming from a late-night shooting at a South Miami-Dade farmstand and a pair of armed robberies that police say followed the same disturbing pattern of luring victims into public restrooms.
Jencarlos Gamez was booked into Metrowest Detention Centre on Tuesday evening and charged as an adult, according to Local 10 News. He was initially detained on July 21 following the incident, according to Miami-Dade jail records obtained by NBC 6 South Florida. He went before a court Wednesday morning, and he was ordered jailed without bond, according to NBC 6.
The shooting occurred around 11:30 p.m. on July 19, 2025, at The Berry Farm, an agritourism facility located at 13720 SW 216th Street in Miami-Dade’s rural Redland region known for U-pick fields and seasonal festivals, according to Time Out. According to NBC 6, the incident began when one group of people attacked another in reprisal for a previous attack. According to NBC 6’s description of the arrest, investigators got video evidence of the incident, which helped identify Gamez as the perpetrator.
Arrest reports published in the same Local 10 article show camera footage of Gamez running towards a group of victims while waving a firearm. According to NBC 6, the film shows him being struck and falling to the ground before collecting an object and firing a gunshot. People at the scene fled as the gunshot rang out, and the victim escaped from the perpetrators, according to NBC 6.
According to NBC 6, Gamez faces many counts in connection with the incident, including attempted murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated violence with a handgun, and carrying a concealed firearm. He is charged with at least three separate cases, including the Berry Farm case and two previous armed robberies that, according to authorities, used a common approach.
NBC 6 reports that Gamez and two other suspects allegedly robbed a victim at gunpoint at a McDonald’s on SW 26th Street on December 13, 2025. According to arrest reports provided by the local station, a co-defendant encouraged unsuspecting victims to hang out before luring them into a public lavatory, where the group robbed them – the same setup investigators claim occurred months later.
A similar incident occurred on July 8, 2026, near Eureka Park on SW 119th Avenue, when a victim was robbed at gunpoint of a bookbag that contained a handgun, according to NBC 6. Suspects pulled the victim into a bathroom, where one suspect pistol-whipped him several times, Gamez hit him, and a third suspect held him down, according to NBC6. Suspects also attempted to steal the victim’s bracelet and earrings before she rushed for help, according to NBC 6. According to NBC 6, the victim identified Gamez in a photo lineup and confessed to his role in the heist.
According to the Baez Law Firm, Florida’s direct-file provision, codified in Florida Statute 985.557, grants state attorneys broad discretionary authority to prosecute minors as young as 14 in adult criminal court for specified violent offences, such as attempted murder and armed robbery, without prior judicial approval. That authority appears to explain how a 17-year-old wound up facing adult felony charges rather than juvenile trials.
If convicted on firearm-enhanced charges, Gamez could face Florida’s so-called 10-20-Life mandatory minimums under Florida Statute 775.087, which remove judges’ discretion and require at least 10 years in prison for possessing a gun during a felony, 20 years for discharging one, and 25 years to life if a discharge causes death or great bodily harm, according to Terrezza Law.
The case is being handled by the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, which took over the Miami-Dade Police Department on January 7, 2025, when Rosie Cordero-Stutz was sworn in as the county’s first elected sheriff in over 60 years, according to WLRN. Under a Florida constitutional mandate, Miami-Dade voters reinstated an independent sheriff’s office, bringing the county police department model to an end after decades.
Gamez resides in South Miami Heights, an unincorporated hamlet about 17 miles south-west of downtown Miami with a 2020 population of 36,770 people, 75.5% of whom identify as Hispanic, according to Census Reporter statistics. He is presently being kept at Metrowest Detention Centre, a maximum-security institution administered by the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department with a capacity of 1,685 inmate beds, according to county budget papers.
The instance comes as overall violent crime statistics have shifted in the opposite way. According to data issued in July 2025 by the Council on Criminal Justice, reported violent crime in major U.S. cities decreased in the first half of 2025 compared to 2024, with robberies dropping 20% and gun attacks falling 21% nationally.
Leave a Reply