A shooting at a Hialeah, Florida apartment complex has killed seven people — three men, three women, and a male gunman.
The Hialeah Florida shooting capped off a long and tense standoff between the gunman, who has not been identified, and police in the suburb.
Cops were called to the complex — which houses about 90 families — at around 6:30 PM last night. Negotiations with the hostage taker wore on into the night, and at around the eight hour mark, police say that relations with the alleged gunman broke down.
At that point, cops say, they made the difficult choice to race in as negotiations “just fell apart” with the shooter, forcing them to make “the decision to go in there and save and rescue the hostages.”
ABC reports that while the Hialeah Florida shooting appears to have stemmed from a landlord tenant dispute, many innocent parties were dragged into the deadly confrontation:
“Hialeah Police Sgt. Eddie Rodriguez told ABC News that before authorities arrived, the gunman was walking through the five-story apartment complex firing randomly at people in the building’s hallways and elevators… The gunman, who is an unidentified male, killed a father who was walking his two children into an apartment from a balcony across the street, police said.”
The network paraphrases Rodriguez as reporting that the slain father “realized that shots were being fired and sprinted toward the front door to get his children to safety,” and that he was “fatally shot, [but] his children were unharmed.”
Two victims of the Hialeah Florida shooting were Italo Pisciotti, 78, and wife, Samira Pisciotti, 68. Daughter Shamira Pisciotti says that she was there when the shooting broke out, adding:
“I saw my mother’s dead body… She died the moment she was shot, but it looks like my dad was still alive after he was shot.”
Other Hialeah Florida shooting victims have yet to be publicly identified.
