O’Neal performs double duty

MIAMI – Miami Heat center and Miami Beach reserve officer Shaquille O’Neal has done it again – this time, helping police nab a hit-and-run driver early Sunday morning.

It was 4 a.m., and O’Neal and bodyguard Jerome Crawford had just returned from an away game in Chicago.

They were outside Crawford’s Coconut Grove home unloading luggage when a car, driven by Emmnueo Cibrin, 18, veered into O’Neal’s parked 2007 Cadillac Escalade.

O’Neal and his bodyguard saw Cibrin leaving the scene, and leapt into the damaged SUV to give chase. They tailed Cibrin and passenger Junior Rondon for about five minutes before catching up with the two Tampa friends near Southwest 17th Avenue and Coral Way.

Rondon, 20, said he and Cibrin had just left the Vision Nightclub on Grand Avenue in Coconut Grove when they struck the open driver-side door of a black Cadillac Escalade parked in the street. Cibrin kept driving, Rondon said, but with good reason.

“He was going to stop, but then we saw the Escalade chasing us,” Rondon told The Miami Herald on Sunday. “We got scared and kept driving, you know?”

Cibrin could not be reached for comment.

They stopped a few minutes later, near a gas station, and Rondon said he and his friend were shocked to see the 7-foot-1 O’Neal step out of the Escalade’s driver seat.

“I couldn’t believe that,” Rondon said. “Of all the people. I mean, damn.”

The Heat center was stern with the friends, who came to Miami to party for the weekend, Rondon said.

“He told us to shut up,” Rondon said. “He said, `I don’t want to talk to you right now.’”

O’Neal flagged down a nearby police officer, Rondon said. Police ticketed Cibrin for several violations, including leaving the scene of an accident, Rondon said, adding that drunken driving was not one of the charges.