A 39-year-old woman from Hialeah was fatally wounded late Wednesday in the parking lot of a busy Miami-Dade County shopping center as she walked toward a movie theater to pick up her daughter.

Miami-Dade police said Beatriz CM-amara had just gotten out of her car and walked past six stalls in the parking lot of Cobb’s Miami Lakes 17 theater when someone in a dark car pulled alongside her and shot at least three times at close range. One bullet struck her in the head, police said.

Emergency personnel flew CM-amara, a mother of two, to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where she died.

The theater is in the popular Main Street shops in Miami Lakes. The place was especially busy Wednesday because of Spring Break, merchants said. Still, all police had to work with early in the investigation was a vague description of the fleeing car, said police spokeswoman Nelda Fonticiella.

Police rounded up a large group of witnesses and were questioning “several people of interest” but had made no arrests as of late Thursday. Investigators said they were planning to return to the shopping center to find more witnesses.

Shortly before the incident, Miami-Dade patrol officers were in the Miami Lakes area searching for a dark-colored car involved in a spree of BB gun shootings in which three people were randomly hit with pellets within the last couple days.

The cars in the pellet shootings and in the murder were each described only as a “dark-colored vehicle” but investigators said they do not think the two cases are related, Fonticiella said.

Police said CM-amara was on her way to pick up her teenage daughter from the theater about 9 p.m. Wednesday, while her elderly mother waited inside the car.

Dario Frazer, a cook at nearby Johnny Rockets restaurant, said he was throwing away the garbage when he heard several pops. He didn’t think anything of it, he said.

Moments later, the parking lot was filled with police and rescue vehicles, Frazer said.

“I wished I would’ve paid attention,” he said. “I heard the pops and thought it was just something that went off.”

A large group of family and friends gathered inside CM-amara’s home in Hialeah on Thursday. A woman at the house turned away reporters, saying the family was requesting privacy.

Ihosvani Rodriguez can be reached at or 305-810-5005.