Before the sun set Tuesday in South Beach, marking the beginning of another party-fueled evening on Ocean Drive, a few dozen residents and politicians visited the popular tourist strip for a more somber purpose: to honor the life of a young tourist killed last week at an Ocean Drive restaurant.
The crowd gathered in Lummus Park near La Cerveceria restaurant, where 21-year-old Dustin Wakefield was shot and killed in broad daylight on Aug. 24 while dining with his family on vacation. Across the park, Ocean Drive was quiet as storm clouds eventually brought rain. Those in attendance joined in song and prayer, laid yellow and white flowers beside his photo and heard a message from Wakefield’s mother asking that they perform good deeds in his honor.
“This makes a ripple effect of love,” part of the message read.
The shooting sparked outrage from residents and city leaders, reigniting years-old discussions about public safety in the tourist hub ahead of a November election when voters will decide who will be mayor and vote in three commission races. But Irene Bigger, an Ocean Drive resident who organized the vigil, said she did not want politics to distract from memorializing Wakefield.
Two city commissioners were in attendance along with several candidates vying for the position of mayor and commissioner. But none of them spoke.
“There’s a time and a place for politics and for our rigorous debate but tonight was just a time for the community to pause, take a moment and reflect on what happened and to honor his life,” Bigger said in an interview after the event.
That time will come soon, she says, as South Beach is in a “crisis” over public safety and quality of life.
The vigil is the second that residents have held in the last six months in response to the death of a tourist in South Beach. During spring break in March, residents mourned the death of 24-year-old Pennsylvania tourist Christine Englehardt, who was found dead in her hotel room after police said she was given fentanyl and sexually assaulted.
Bigger said the environment in South Beach — where some visitors act out or commit crimes — needs to be changed to limit the overabundance of liquor stores and tobacco shops and more strictly enforce open-container laws.
“We are dealing with a crisis, and our community is grieving for Dustin and his family,” she said.
At a community meeting Tuesday morning, former Mayor Philip Levine told a crowd of commission candidates, former city leaders and residents that last week’s shooting was a “911 wake-up call for all of us.”
“My view is we’re going to war right now, we’re going to war on crime,” said Levine, who was mayor from 2013 to 2017.
In recent years, the city has struggled to balance the interests of its long-standing nightlife industry with concerns from a growing resident population near South Beach’s party scene that stretches from Ocean Drive to Collins Avenue, from Fifth to 16th streets.
In March, after rowdy spring break crowds led Miami Beach’s city manager to enact an 8 p.m. curfew, the commission voted to temporarily hire 15 new officers and two sergeants who would patrol the South Beach strip, create a “real time crime center” and hire two crime analysts to monitor surveillance cameras, while accelerating current plans to enhance the city’s camera system.
Mayor Dan Gelber, who was elected in 2017, had led a push to “eliminate” the South Beach entertainment district by imposing an earlier alcohol sales cutoff, bringing in more mixed-use development and requiring businesses to abide by a stricter code of conduct. The commission passed a 2 a.m. last call ordinance earlier this year, but a Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge deemed it “unlawful” after the Clevelander Hotel sued the city over the restriction.
Gelber said the recent shooting “sickens” him and that his immediate thoughts were with the victim’s family. But he said the party in the streets fuels misbehavior and, too often, leads to tragedy.
The business model in South Beach, he said, attracts tourists who bring guns, get into fights and come to use drugs.
“There’s absolutely no reason we should tolerate it,” he said. “The entertainment district has to go. I’ve been saying this since I’ve been mayor.”
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