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Questions Remain After Local Teacher Dies In Violent Police Involved Crash

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – A surveillance camera captures a car darting down Hialeah Drive near east 5th avenue on Tuesday night at around 7 p.m.

It happens outside Eduardo Valdes's business and Hialeah police want to study this tape.

The crash left vehicles mangled, injured two Hialeah officers and took the life of 51-year-old Orestes Amador Jr., a veteran math teacher at the design and architecture senior high school, known as DASH, located in Midtown Miami.

"I think it was something terrible that happened here," Valdes said.

He wonders if his cameras captured one of the vehicles involved in the crash and will not forget what he heard.

"It sounded like an explosion," Valdes explained. A big explosion. Boom. That's it."

Danny Gigi saw what happened after the accident that also damaged Charlie's Ice Cream Shop.

"About 40 cars here, 3 fire trucks and 2 rescues. I knew it was pretty serious," Gigi said of the scene immediately following the crash.

Claudia Miranda works at Charlie's Ice Cream.

"It sounded like an explosion, it was really really loud," she said. "I thought one of these huge machines had fallen because it was so loud.

The crash happened in front of the shop, then the car with the officers slammed into the front wall.

"It was just really loud, pretty scary because it could have been a lot worse," she said. "It could have come inside and it didn't. I'm pretty glad it didn't."

Authorities aren't saying how Amador lost his life or who may have been at fault.

Police say officers Ernesto Del Valle and Daniel Garcia-Muniz were in the car.  They are not saying what they were doing, where they were going, how the crash happened or who was at fault.

At this point, Hialeah police are calling it a traffic crash and it remains an open and active investigation.

The accident prompted a tweet from Miami-Dade Schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho.

A Miami-Dade Schools spokesman tell us grief counselors will be at DASH when it reopens on Monday.

Marina Bravo along with Amador's family and friends are heartbroken.

"We're all in shock, I can't believe it," she said.

He was a beloved teacher at the Design and architecture senior high school in Miami's design district. A man who looked after his family.

"He took care of his mom who had cancer. He took care of his father who had Alzheimer's. He took care of his disabled sister and has now kind of taken paternal role with his nieces and nephews who lost their mother who was only 42, his sister," Bravo said.

There are a lot of questions about what happened and how.  Police are saying very little.

"We don't know, we're all questioning," Bravo said. "Was it a chase, was there, we don't know it's very strange. We don't know, the family, we're all wanting to know what happened."

Meanwhile, a source tells CBS4 the injured officers were released from Jackson Memorial Hospital Wednesday morning.

Police are not releasing any more information and say the case is being monitored by the Miami-Dade State Attorney's office.

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