Florida Hostage Standoff Ends With Seven Dead [Video]

In Florida a hostage standoff ended after the gunman was shot dead by SWAT officers. Seven were left dead, including the gunman.

Police responded to a 911 call Friday evening reporting gunshots in Hialeah, Florida, a Miami suburb. A spokesman for local police, Sargent Eddie Rodriguez, said responders found an armed man.

CNN reports that Rodriguez told the public the gunman was found barricaded inside an apartment building with several residents being held hostage.

When they first got on the scene police also found two people shot dead and heard more gunfire. Officers set up around the apartment building and began negotiations with the gunman. Police also sent a robot into the building.

After negotiations failed and ended, an expert SWAT team was sent in. Finding the man on the fourth floor, he was shot dead by officers. The Hialeah, Florida hostage standoff ended with two hostages, a man and a woman, being saved.

Unfortunately, the SWAT team found three more hostages the gunman had killed. The victims included the building manager and his wife.

An additional man was found shot dead in an apartment lobby across the street. Authorities believe this may have been from a stray bullet.

One spokesperson for local law enforcement said that the standoff was “one of the worst shootings we’ve probably ever had in Hialeah.” He added that an investigation would begin to find out “how and why this happened.”

NBC News says that a young woman identified two of the victims as her parents. She believed that an argument had broken out between her parents and the gunman, after which the man shot her parents. “My mom was dead the moment that she was shot and my dad still had a pulse when I got to him,” she said.

Currently police are trying to identify the other victims in the Florida hostage standoff incident as well as the gunman and his motives.

[Image via ShutterStock]