HIALEAH, Fla. - A man set fire to his South Florida apartment, killed six people and held another two hostage at gunpoint before a SWAT team stormed the complex and fatally shot him Saturday, according to police and witness accounts.
The ordeal lasted eight hours, with Pedro Alberto Vargas running through the building, firing at random and eluding officers, police said.
Vargas, 42, used a combustible liquid Friday evening to start the blaze, police spokesman Carl Zogby said.
The building manager, Italo Pisciotti, 79, and his wife, Camira Pisciotti, 69, noticed smoke and ran to the apartment. Vargas stepped out and fired several times, killing both, according to the police account.
Vargas then went to his fourth-story balcony and fired 10 to 20 shots in the street, killing Carlos Javier Gavilanes, 33, who was parking a car, Zogby said.
Then Vargas went to the third floor, kicked the door in on another apartment and killed a family of three: Patricio Simono, 64; his wife, Merly S. Niebles, 51; and a teen daughter.
Zogby said Vargas then ran through 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.
Vargas forced his way into an apartment and took two people hostage.
Ester Lazcano lives two doors from where the shooting began and said she was in the shower when she heard the first shots, which were followed by at least a dozen more.
“I felt the shots,” she said.
Miriam Valdes, 70, lives on the building’s top floor - one floor above where the shooting began. She said she heard gunfire and later saw smoke and smelled something like burned plastic, 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 SWAT team tried talking with him through the door of the unit where he was holding the hostages.
Valdes said she heard about eight 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 apartment, fatally shooting Vargas 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.
“He was a good son,” Lazcano said. “He’d take her in the morning to run errands” and took her to doctor appointments.
But Valdes said he was 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 called Vargas’ background “unremarkable.” He 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 not responded to any previous calls at Vargas’ home or found any criminal background on him.
On Saturday, Agustin Hernandez - the brother-in-law of victim Niebles - moved his relatives’ things out of the apartment building and into his car.
Among them were several photos, one showing the teen smiling in a red graduation gown, another of his sister-in-law in a white dress and pearls.
Hernandez said Simono was a friend of the building manager.
Police didn’t identify the slain teen, but Hernandez’s wife, Zulima Niebles, said her name was Priscila Perez.
Marcela Chavarri, director of the American Christian School, said Perez was about to enter her senior year at the school.
“She was a lovely girl,” Chavarri said through tears. “She was always happy and helping her classmates.”
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 police 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.
The apartment where neighbors said the shooting started was charred, the door and ceiling immediately outside burned black.
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.” Information for this article was contributed by Suzette Laboy of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 07/28/2013