‘Somebody shot into my house,’ El Portal resident tells police

EL PORTAL, Fla. – Tamika Bickham was working on Friday night in her home office. She lives in Miami-Dade County’s quaint village of El Portal.

It was quiet when the former Local 10 News reporter suddenly heard glass shatter. She ran out of her office to investigate.

Once she was in her living room, she saw there was a hole in the sliding glass door. Bickham said she knew it was a bullet hole. She was shaking when she called 911.

“I told them, ‘I think somebody shot into my house,’” Bickham said.

El Portal Police Department officers noticed the bullet went past her couch and right over the coffee table. It ricocheted off the concrete wall behind the television and ended up on the carpet.

“I could have been sitting there!”

Miami-Dade Police Department officers were investigating a shooting near Bickham’s home at Northwest Fifth Avenue. According to Detective Lee Cowart, a spokesman for the department, acoustic sensor technology detected the shooting before officers found ammunition casings at Northwest 82nd Street and Fifth Avenue. 

The officers couldn’t confirm if the bullet at Bickham’s house was a stray bullet from that shooting.

“It’s not anything you expect, but it’s like, ‘Wow!’ Your life can change from one second to the next,” Bickham said.

Officers are asking anyone with information about the shooting to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.

Local 10 News Assignment Desk Editor Emily Hales contributed to this report.


About the Author:

Janine Stanwood joined Local 10 News in February 2004 as an assignment editor. She is now a general assignment reporter. Before moving to South Florida from her Washington home, Janine was the senior legislative correspondent for a United States senator on Capitol Hill.