A man set fire to his South Florida apartment, then shot and killed six people and held another two hostages at gunpoint before police commandos stormed the unit and fatally shot him Saturday.
The ordeal lasted eight hours, with the gunman Pedro Vargas running through the complex, randomly firing and initially eluding officers in pursuit of him.
After Vargas, 42, set fire to a combustible liquid on Friday night, the building manager, Italo Pisciotti, 79, and his wife, Camira, 69, noticed smoke and ran to the apartment. Vargas came out and fired several times, killing both of them, said police spokesman Carl Zogby.
Vargas then went to his fourth-story balcony and fired 10 to 20 shots out into the street, killing Carlos Javier Gavilanes, 33, who was parking a car, Zogby said.
Then, Vargas went down to the third floor, kicked the door in on another apartment and killed a family of three: Patricio Simono, 64; his wife, Merly Sophia Niebles, 51, and a teenage daughter whom a family member identified as Priscila Perez.
Vargas then ran throughout the building, firing “at random, in a very irrational fashion.”
“He kept running from us as he fired at us, and we fired at him,” Zogby said.
Next, Vargas forced his way into another apartment and took two people hostage at gunpoint.
Ester Lazcano, who lives two doors down from where the shooting began, said she was in the shower when she heard the first shots, then there were at least a dozen more.
“I felt the shots,” she said.
Miriam Valdes, 70, who lives one floor above where the shooting began, said she heard gunfire and later saw smoke and fumes that smelled like burned plastic entering her apartment, and ran in fear to the unit across the hall.
A crisis team was able to briefly establish communication with Vargas. Sgt. Eddie Rodriguez said negotiators and a police special weapons and tactics team tried talking with him from the other side of the door of the unit where he held the hostages.
Valdes said she heard officers talking with him as she stayed holed up at the neighboring apartment. She said officers told him to “let these people out.”
“We’re going to help you,” she said they told him.
She said the gunman first asked for his girlfriend and then his mother but refused to cooperate.
Rodriguez said the talks eventually “just fell apart.” Officers stormed the building, fatally shooting the gunman in an exchange of gunfire.
“They made the decision to go in there and save and rescue the hostages,” Rodriguez said.
Both hostages survived.
Neighbors said the shooter lived in the building with his mother. Police don’t believe she was home at the time of the shootings.
Valdes said the man was also known as a difficult person who sometimes got into fights and yelled at his mother.
“He was a very abusive person,” she said. “He didn’t have any friends there.”
Zogby said police are investigating any possible disputes between Vargas and the building manager but don’t yet have any information on a possible motive. “Nobody seems to know why he acted the way he acted,” Zogby said.
He said police had neither received any prior calls at Vargas’ home nor found any criminal background on him.
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In Hialeah — a suburb of about 230,000 residents, about three-quarters of whom are Cuban or Cuban-American — the street in the quiet, apartment-building-lined neighborhood was still blocked by tape Saturday afternoon.
The building where the standoff occurred is an aging, beige structure with an open terrace in the middle. It has 90 to 95 units.
Zogby called the whole building a crime scene. “He probably fired dozens of shots during the whole incident,” he said.
“It could have been a much, much more dangerous situation.”
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