The date of that fatal shooting is indelibly marked on all Coral Gables police officers as on that date each year the department presents its annual "Robert DeKorte Memorial Award" to that "member of the Coral Gables Police Department who best exemplifies courage, dedication and devotion to duty." In 1994 the DeKorte award was given to Coral Gables Det. Samuel Whitley. Dade citizens who know the location of the murder (the small grocery store on Dixie Highway just a few feet from Deel Ford) are reminded of the death of Officer DeKorte each time they drive on Dixie Highway in Coral Gables.
Officer DeKorte was working the 7:00AM-3:00PM shift on the house inspection detail (which checked on vacant houses and houses of residents on vacation) on that fatal Friday and was looking forward to his weekend off as he and his wife and three children had planned a trip to Tampa. Around 10:30AM he drove by the Florida National Bank at 169 Miracle Mile to talk with his wife, Ruth, at her drive-in teller post about their much anticipated weekend trip.
Then at 11:53AM, DeKorte, riding alone in his police car, heard a radio call for a "signal 25" (i.e., "hold-up alarm") for the liquor store at 238 S. Dixie Highway. Officer DeKorte was aware that there had been many false alarms at this liquor store in the past and perhaps thought this was just another false alarm. Since he was on the house inspection detail he was not required to answer radio calls but he was near the site of the alarm and was the type of officer who always responded to calls. In fact, Chief William G. Kimbrough had recently warned DeKorte about "trying to stop crimes single-handedly" and not waiting for a back-up. The warning was a result of DeKorte's stopping and searching a known armed burglary suspect's car without a back-up.
DeKorte reached the Happiness Boys Liquor Store only one minute (11:54AM) after the alarm went off and was the first police car to arrive. He parked his patrol car at the front of the store, jumped out, and "burst" into the tiny liquor store with his gun still in its holster. The store was a concrete block building and had no windows so DeKorte had to enter to check out the alarm.
Officer DeKorte surprised two black males who were robbing the store. Walter Garfield Sanders, 21, and Raymond Anthony Bradley, 17, "had ripped a wire mesh cage separating customers from the counter of the liquor store" and had pistol-whipped the owner of the liquor store, Al Lefkove, and his clerk, Meyer Kramer, as they took $1,500 from the cash register. The two robbers entered the store with guns drawn using a customer as a shield.
However, the owner had been able to set off a silent alarm that sounded at police headquarters. The robbers were taking money from the cash register when Officer DeKorte came through the door.
Both robbers had their guns in their hands and fired at the approaching policeman. Bradley, who had a .22 caliber pistol, shot DeKorte in the arm and Sanders, who had a .38 caliber revolver, shot him in the neck. The neck wound was the fatal shot as it traveled downward into the chest area and into the lungs. DeKorte fell back toward the door as he was shot.
The two robbers then tried to flee through the front door. However, DeKorte at 5'9" and 270 lbs., blocked their path and attempted to draw his gun but the two robbers reached him first. The fatally wounded officer struggled with the two robbers and Sanders, "discarded his own gun and took the wounded DeKorte's weapon." The wounded officer ran outside the store and around the corner in an effort to chase the fleeing robbers but then went back to his patrol car.
At this moment (11:55AM--one minute after DeKorte arrived and two minutes after the alarm) a second patrol car arrived on the scene. Officers Charles Richards and James Butler (who later became the Coral Gables Police Chief) saw DeKorte struggling with the two men in the doorway and then saw him begin to chase the men and then return to his cruiser. The two officers did not realize that DeKorte had been shot and thus jumped from their patrol car and began to chase the two robbers. A third patrol car arrived with two more officers and both also gave chase not realizing that DeKorte was wounded.
The fleeing robbers split up forcing the two officers to do likewise. Sanders threw his original gun and evidence from the robbery (i.e., wallets taken from two of the robbery victims) under a house at 215 Florida Ave. but he kept DeKorte's gun as he ran from the scene. (The gun and evidence were found the following day.) Officer Butler chased Bradley and Officer Richards chased Sanders. Butler recognized Bradley from prior police contacts and thus knew the identity of the person he was chasing.
Richards caught up with the fleeing Sanders a block from the liquor store and shouted, "Hold it!" as the fleeing robber leaped across a two-foot high fence into the bushes separating 137 Florida Ave. from the home next door. Seeing that his path was blocked by a parked truck, Sanders turned and fired a shot (with DeKorte's weapon) at the pursuing policeman who was only 10 feet away. Sanders then dove into the heavy bushes at the rear corner of the yard.
At the first gunshot by Sanders, the black male working on the parked truck ran toward the street. Officer Richards, who drew his gun after the first shot by Sanders, saw the running black male on his right and thought he was the fleeing robber who had just shot at him and shouted "hold it!" But as the fleeing witness stopped, the hiding Sanders again fired four more times at the pursuing policeman. Richards spun back to his left and saw the barrel of the gun sticking out of the bushes and fired several shots into the bushes.
Then Sanders called out, "I'm hit: don't shoot anymore." Sanders was still holding the gun in his hand when Officer Richards stepped across the fence and walked up to him as he lay in the bushes. Sanders still had his gun pointed at Richards but the officer snatched the gun out of his hand and asked him the identity of the second robber. Sanders refused to answer the question and only said, "I hurt." Richards raised Sander's shirt and placed his thumb over a bullet hole which was located on the left side of his chest above the heart. Richards wrote in his police report that the "subject then expired."
As Officer Butler chased Bradley he heard shots fired from the direction of the Richards-Sanders chase and broke off his pursuit of Bradley to investigate the shots fired. As Butler arrived his partner told him he had shot the suspect he had been chasing and needed an ambulance. Butler ran to a nearby house and called the station.
The two officers then waited at the scene until an ambulance arrived. It was at this point that they discovered that the .38 caliber "Trooper" (DeKorte's gun) used by Sanders had been fired five times with the fifth a misfire. One live bullet remained in the gun. Officer Richards realized that the misfire may have saved his life. They also realized that Sanders had three gunshot wounds to the heart area, rather than the one bullet hole initially seen by Richards.
While Officers Butler and Richards were chasing the fleeing robbers, the fatally wounded DeKorte, who had broken off the chase and walked back to his patrol car, picked up his radio and said, "250 (his unit number) I've been shot." The wounded officer did not give his location but attempted to drive to Doctor's Hospital which was only 1 and 12 miles away. Unfortunately, he never made it to the hospital. DeKorte lost consciousness and his patrol car jumped a curb and slammed against a palm tree, its rear tires still spinning, in the 5000 block of Ponce de Leon Blvd. near Granada Blvd. The accident occurred five blocks from the hospital.
At 12:04PM a citizen notified police of the "accident" involving a police car on Ponce de Leon. Officer Sidney Hite was the first unit to arrive at the accident scene. He found DeKorte unconscious and slumped against the steering wheel, pulled him from the cruiser and rushed him to Doctor's Hospital. DeKorte was pronounced dead at the emergency room of the hospital. Many of the hospital staff knew DeKorte as he had taken numerous persons to the emergency room over the years and his three children had been born at this hospital.
Dr. Joseph Davis, Dade County Medical Examiner since 1956, said that the delay in getting DeKorte to the hospital did not cost him his life as the nature of the wounds (i.e., severe hemorrhaging and internal bleeding) were such that he probably would have died even if a doctor had been available at the shooting scene. He died with a bullet lodged in his lung. The cause of death was listed as "gunshot wound of right side of neck, lacerating trachea, left subclavian vessels and left lung."
Within minutes of the shooting of Officer DeKorte, a massive manhunt was launched for the second robber, Raymond Bradley. At 12:02PM a BOLO was issued describing a black male suspect wanted for the shooting of a Coral Gables police officer. More than 100 officers from Coral Gables, Metro and Miami participated in the search for Bradley. The FBI even aided in the investigation as President Richard Nixon on June 14 had authorized the FBI to aid in the investigation of local police killings.
Two of the Coral Gables officers participating in this manhunt were Louis Pena and Alfred Terrinoni, both of whom were later killed in the line of duty. Dekorte had been on the scene of the murder of Coral Gables Officer Walter Stathers in 1967. In 1972 there were only 125 sworn officers in the Coral Gables Department and three were killed from 1972 to 1980.
Four Miami policemen found and arrested Bradley without a struggle shortly before 6 p.m. They responded to an anonymous tip indicating that they would find Bradley disguised as a woman in an apartment at 105 S. Dixie, apartment #10. The arrest was made in the same block as the shooting of Dekorte. Bradley was apparently waiting for darkness to make an escape attempt.