A person was shot and hospitalized Saturday morning in Riviera Beach, and a suspect is already in custody as detectives work to piece together what happened. Police responded to the 1400 block of West 35th Street at 11:26 a.m., according to a spokeswoman for the department.
Police spokeswoman Brittany Collins told WPBF 25 that officers found one person shot at the scene. That victim was taken to a local hospital for treatment, and a person of interest was taken into custody in connection with the shooting, per the same account. The investigation remains active and ongoing, Collins said, and no further details about the victim's condition, the suspect's identity, or a possible motive have been released.
A Street Corridor With A Violent Recent History
A Street Corridor With A Violent Recent History The shooting adds another chapter to a troubling recent stretch in Riviera Beach. On the 1400 block of West 36th Street, three juveniles were arrested and charged with first-degree murder after an August 21 attempted robbery left a 17-year-old girl dead, as Hoodline previously reported. That same block was also the site of a March 2023 shooting in which a woman was shot inside her vehicle during an armed robbery attempt, according to city records.
The West 35th Street shooting also comes just one day after Riviera Beach police announced first-degree murder charges against two men following a cold-case review into the 2019 shooting death of Kevin Ulysse, a case Hoodline covered in its report on murder charges in a 2019 killing. Ulysse was shot near Avenue H and West 7th Street. The developments have made for an unusually active few days for Riviera Beach investigators.
City Leans On Tech To Fight Persistent Gun Violence
Riviera Beach, a Palm Beach County municipality of roughly 40,000 residents, has invested heavily in gunfire-detection and surveillance technology to respond to shootings. The city was the first in Florida to adopt ShotSpotter acoustic gunshot detection in 2010, giving officers real-time phone alerts that pinpoint where shots are fired, according to the National Case Closed Project. The Riviera Beach Police Department's Real-Time Crime Center integrates those acoustic sensors with a network of more than 200 surveillance cameras across the municipality, per the Atlas of Surveillance.
The department employs 120 sworn officers and 79 non-sworn personnel to serve the city's population, handling around 80,000 calls for service annually, according to official municipal records from the City of Riviera Beach. Despite that investment, gun violence has remained a persistent issue: 100 percent of the city's homicides in 2023 involved firearms, according to an evaluation by RTI International for the National Case Closed Project. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting statistics show the city recorded 346 violent crime offenses in a recent reporting year, including 7 homicides, 20 rape offenses, 71 robberies, and 248 aggravated assaults.
Department Leadership Amid A Busy Stretch
Police Chief Michael A. Coleman leads the department as it works through a cluster of violent cases. The department is investigating the West 35th Street shooting and other recent violent cases in Riviera Beach.
No further details have been released about the condition of the person taken to the hospital or the identity of the person now in custody. Police say the investigation remains active and ongoing, and anyone with information is expected to be directed to detectives as the case develops.
