Vivian Olodun arrived home Sunday night to a crime scene in her 45th-floor apartment in downtown Miami. Shards of glass were strewn across her daughter’s empty high chair after an apparent bullet impact partially shattered a window in her kitchen. The city police advised her to sleep with the curtains closed.
The marketing executive and married mother of two toddlers was at a wedding when their nanny called with the alarming report: After hearing five gunshots outside, the glass of a hurricane-impact window shattered, cracking but not collapsing. There was a highchair near the wall-length glass window overlooking downtown, but Olodun’s two daughters, ages two and three, were playing in another room.
“If the bullet had gone through the glass, it would have easily hit the high chair,” Olodun said in an interview Monday from her three-bedroom apartment in the Vizcayne South Tower on the 200 block of Northeast Second Street, just steps from Biscayne Bay . “They almost shot my baby’s high chair.”
A police spokesperson said officers responded to a call at 7:15 p.m. Sunday after receiving reports of multiple shots fired into an occupied apartment. “There were no injuries as a result of the shooting,” said spokesperson Officer Kiara Delva. “However, the investigation into the person responsible is still ongoing.”
Olodun, owner of Flourish Media, a marketing agency, said police officers who visited her unit said investigators were looking for a gunman from one of the high-rises across from the Vizcayne South building.
At least one other apartment nearby was hit by the gunfire, which happened almost an hour before sunset. Local 10 on Monday aired a photo of another window with a similar spider pattern and reported an interview with an unidentified resident of a 44th floor unit who said she hid under the bed with her dog after hearing gunfire heard.
Olodun said officers told her they did not believe her unit was targeted and that they considered it a random act of violence. The Only in Dade Instagram account posted video footage taken by the family’s nanny of Olodun’s floor after the gunfire, with shards of glass strewn across the high chair and surrounding toys lying on the wooden floor next to the kitchen.
On her own Instagram account, Olodun posted a video of herself sweeping as the sun rose on Monday, while Sunday’s glass had seemingly disappeared. She revealed the gunfire incident from the night before and added a message to her followers: “Call your loved ones today… Life is too short.”
Her closing line on the eight-second video, as the morning sun reflected off the buildings behind her, asked, “Miami, what kind of city do we want to be?”
