A convicted felon who is on bond for a pending narcotics case allegedly ditched a loaded handgun while running from cops who responded to calls of shots fired in the Gold Coast on Thursday evening.
The man, Xavier Mireles, is not charged with shooting a weapon, and no one was hurt by the gunfire.
Police responded to a flood of calls about gunfire at State and Cedar streets, just north of the “Viagra Triangle,” around 9:13 p.m. Witnesses told police that they saw a man shooting at a black SUV that fled the scene, according to a CPD media statement.
Cops allegedly saw Mireles, 30, run from the scene and chased after him. He tossed a handgun over a fence on the first block of East Elm Street moments before police apprehended him, according to the allegations.
Officers recovered a gun from a yard on Elm Street and found seven shell casings at the mouth of an alley where the shots were fired, according to prosecutors.
Mireles’ private defense attorney questioned the prosecutors’ “fact pattern” and said the arrest was “questionable,” but he did not elaborate.
Prosecutors charged Mireles with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon. They said he has two prior felony drug convictions.
Under bail conditions set by Judge Susana Ortiz, Mireles must pay a $7,500 deposit to go home on electronic monitoring. Separately, Ortiz held Mireles without bail for violating the conditions of release in his pending drug case until the judge overseeing that matter could review the new allegations.
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