A night of singing along and recording videos inside a North Bay Village Airbnb turned violent early Sunday when police say a 23-year-old man shot and wounded another person inside a unit at the Bayshore Yacht & Tennis Club condominium building. Officers responded to the shooting report just before 1:30 a.m., according to police, and arrested Myles Jerami Bethel, of Miramar, in connection with the shooting.
North Bay Village police said Bethel shot and wounded the victim while the two were listening and singing to music and recording videos at the short-term rental, according to WPLG Local 10. A witness told the outlet he heard a loud bang while Bethel and the victim were recording, then saw Bethel holding a gun. The witness also said he saw a pool of blood after the victim fell to the floor and went onto the balcony.
Inside a bedroom at the time of the shooting was the witness's girlfriend, who told police she heard the bang and screams. She called 911 and, per the same account, instructed Bethel to apply pressure to the victim's wound while she stayed on the line with dispatchers. The victim reportedly also experienced a panic attack amid the chaos.
Victim in Surgery, Suspect Silent
Police told the station they were unable to speak with the victim, who was in surgery following the shooting. Investigators have not determined whether the shooting was intentional, according to the police report cited by the outlet. Bethel did not speak to police officers, the report notes.
Bethel faces a charge of shooting or throwing a deadly missile. Under Florida Statute § 790.19, that offense is classified as a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison, 15 years of probation, and fines of up to $10,000. Despite the severity of the charge, Bethel was held on a $2,500 bond and booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, a 1,300-bed facility in unincorporated Miami-Dade County that serves as the county's primary intake site for felony arrestees. The Miami-Dade County Corrections and Rehabilitation Department, which runs TGK, manages an average daily population of 5,000 to 6,000 inmates across its facilities, making it the eighth-largest local detention system in the country, per Wikipedia.
A Building Known for Short-Term Rentals
The shooting happened inside a unit at the Bayshore Yacht & Tennis Club, an 11-story, 173-unit condominium building at 7904 West Drive on Harbor Island built in 1963, according to Homes.com. Multiple people were staying inside the short-term rental at the time, the police report says. The building is recognized locally as one of the few North Bay Village condominium complexes that explicitly allows daily short-term rentals, offering bayfront amenities and 24-hour concierge service.
North Bay Village has required short-term rental operators to register annually since 2016, with an $800 initial license fee and a $500 annual renewal fee, along with compliance with village noise and safety rules, according to the North Bay Village government. Unpermitted rentals can draw fines of $250 for a first offense, $500 for a second, and a potential one-year rental ban for a third violation under municipal code reported by The Real Deal. Whether the unit involved in Sunday's shooting was properly registered with village code enforcement remains an open question.
State Law Limits Local Control Over Rentals
Florida law complicates any local crackdown on short-term rentals. Under Florida Statute § 509.032(7)(b), municipalities are preempted from banning vacation rentals outright or restricting how often they can be rented unless local rules were grandfathered in before June 1, 2011, according to Online Sunshine. That leaves individual condo associations, like the one governing the Bayshore Yacht & Tennis Club, to set their own building-level rental policies rather than relying on the village to do it for them.
The North Bay Village Police Department, led by Chief Carlos Noriega since December 2015, achieved formal state accreditation in 2024 and provides around-the-clock law enforcement across the village's three islands along the John F. Kennedy Causeway, according to the North Bay Village Police Department. Sunday's shooting comes just weeks after a man out on felony bond pointed a rifle at a neighbor inside the village's Palm Tree Club, another sign of recent firearm-related incidents in the community's multi-family buildings.
