Two 22-year-old twin brothers already out on bond for a 2022 attempted murder case are facing new felony charges after Miami-Dade investigators say they carried out drive-by paintball attacks against strangers in unincorporated Naranja. Ernest Germain Flowers and Evan Germain Flowers were booked into jail on charges of felony battery, misdemeanor battery and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, with bonds set at $12,001 each. Despite posting those bonds, both men remain held pending an appearance before a division judge.
According to Local 10 News, deputies responded to Naranja Lakes Park at around 4:30 p.m. on August 18 after a woman reported she had sustained multiple considerable injuries to her leg. She told investigators that a silver SUV pulled up and the occupants opened fire on her with paintball rounds, a claim echoed by a second victim, a man who said he was shot with paintball pellets while sitting on a bus bench at Southwest 264th Street and South Dixie Highway. Naranja Lakes Park sits at 14401 SW 272nd Street in unincorporated South Miami-Dade, a suburban stretch near major residential complexes along South Dixie Highway close to the Florida Turnpike and Southland Mall corridors, according to The Heights at Coral Town Park.
Surveillance Footage Leads Investigators to the Twins
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue treated the injured woman at the scene, and investigators later said she identified Ernest Flowers as the shooter after viewing a photo lineup, per deputies. The station's report notes that investigators used surveillance footage and other investigative means to track the vehicle involved, eventually identifying a license plate, a possible residence and persons of interest. Authorities believe the twins may be connected to multiple other similar incidents, though the report does not specify additional victims or locations.
Under Florida law, elevating a paintball shooting from a misdemeanor to felony aggravated assault or battery requires prosecutors to show the marker was operated in a manner capable of causing death or great bodily harm, according to Donet, McMillan & Trontz, P.A. The firm notes that defense attorneys typically argue paintball markers do not meet the legal threshold for a deadly weapon, a defense the Flowers brothers may raise as their case proceeds. Drive-by paintball attacks are not new to South Florida; the firm points to an October 2018 spree of similar attacks across Miami Gardens that led to three arrests on felony battery charges, part of a stretch in which Miami Police logged at least six separate paintball-related incidents in a single month.
A 2022 Shooting at Dadeland Mall Still Hangs Over the Case
Ernest and Evan Flowers were previously connected to a December 2022 shooting in a Dadeland Mall parking garage, for which they remain out on bond facing attempted murder charges. That case stemmed from an argument between two groups near Macy's that escalated when 28-year-old Shakamarley Walker was chased in a vehicle and shot in the left leg, according to CBS News Miami, which reported Walker was treated at Jackson Memorial South Trauma Center. The outlet also reported that the suspects' getaway vehicle crashed at Southwest 147th Avenue and 216th Street after a police pursuit on the Florida Turnpike, with the Flowers twins fleeing on foot before surrendering to police days later, while a co-defendant, Alex Antonio Bryant Jr., was apprehended at the crash scene.
That history matters now because of Florida Statute § 903.0471, which gives courts the authority to revoke a defendant's pretrial release and hold them without bail if probable cause exists that they committed a new crime while out on bond — without requiring a conviction on the new charges, according to the Sammis Law Firm. That statute, enacted in 2000, appears to explain why the twins remain in custody despite having posted monetary bonds on the new charges; it will ultimately be up to a division judge to decide whether their 2022 attempted murder case bond is formally revoked. If convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, Florida law classifies the offense as a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison, five years of probation and a $5,000 fine, as previously detailed in a separate Hoodline report on a similar bond case.
New Sheriff's Office, Same Jail
The deputies who investigated the paintball attacks are part of the newly reconstituted Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office, which took over county law enforcement duties in January 2025 under elected Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz, ending nearly 60 years in which Miami-Dade was the only Florida county without an elected sheriff, according to the Miami-Dade County government. Voters approved a statewide constitutional amendment mandating independent county sheriffs, prompting the shift from the former Miami-Dade Police Department. Jail operations, however, remain separate from that new agency: Ernest and Evan Flowers are being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Doral, which serves as the county's primary intake and pretrial detention facility under the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department, per Wikipedia.
The Naranja area has seen other violent crime in recent months. In February, deputies arrested a 22-year-old man on two counts of attempted murder after a shooting near Southwest 266th Street and Southwest 138th Avenue left two men wounded, as Hoodline previously reported; that suspect was also booked into TGK without bond. It remains unclear whether prosecutors will move to formally revoke bond on the Flowers twins' original attempted murder case, and investigators have not said whether additional victims from the suspected paintball spree have come forward.
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