Prior to the shooting

At 1:37 p.m., hours before the shooting started, Vargas called 9-1-1 and reported he was being followed, asking the dispatcher to run the license plate of a vehicle parked outside his apartment. He also claimed he was being threatened by people using witchcraft on him. His mother, 83-year-old Esperanza Patterson, then took the phone and told the dispatcher about her son's strange behavior. The dispatcher informed Patterson that police units have been sent to her residence, but Patterson advised against it, and later informed the dispatcher that Vargas had left, having gone to the office of a lawyer he hired for a recent legal matter.^[3]

Shooting

Glock 17

According to officials, Vargas poured combustible liquid on $10,000 in cash and set it on fire in his apartment unit at around 6:30 p.m.^[4][5][6] The Todel Apartments' manager, 79-year-old Italo Pisciotti, and his 69-year-old wife Samira noticed the smoke and ran to the apartment. Vargas stepped into the hallway and opened fire with a Glock 17 9mm semiautomatic pistol, killing both.^[1][7][8][9] He proceeded to go to his balcony on the fourth floor of the building and fired 10 to 20 bullets into the street, fatally hitting 33-year-old Carlos Gavilanes as he got out of his car.^[7][8][9]

Vargas then kicked open the door of apartment 304, where he shot and killed the residents, 64-year-old Patricio Simono, his 51-year-old wife Merly Niebels, and their 17-year-old daughter Priscilla Perez.^{[8][9][10][11]} Police officers responded to the scene and exchanged gunfire with Vargas throughout the complex's stairwells for about five hours.^[12][13]

Vargas then entered apartment 525, where he took the residents, Zoeb and Farida Nek, hostage for about three hours. During the standoff, he continued firing shots at officers outside. After negotiations reportedly broke down, authorities decided to send in a six-officer SWAT team to rescue the hostages. The team entered the building and found the two hostages praying in the living room, while Vargas was pacing around out of their view. Officers outside distracted Vargas with a stun grenade, allowing the SWAT team to rescue the hostages and open fire on Vargas, who they gunned down after a brief shootout. Both hostages escaped unharmed. Two fully loaded magazines were found at the scene.^{[13][6][8][9][12][14]}

The event was the deadliest mass shooting in Hialeah's history,^[15] as well as the deadliest in the entire Miami area in three decades.^[16]

Professional problems

He worked at the media services department at Miami Dade College's North Campus starting in 2004,^[19] and although his initial performance evaluations judged him positively, they began noting a lack of social skills. Vargas was eventually forced to resign in 2008 after the school found he downloaded inappropriate files, including a computer hacking tutorial from The Anarchist Cookbook. Several months afterward, Miami Dade College received anonymous online threats that were traced to a public library in Hialeah, though Vargas was suspected of being the sender. Vargas later found employment at a Miami company as a graphic designer, but was fired after three months. Like Miami Dade College, the company later received anonymous threats and Vargas was suspected, but not confirmed as the sender.^[14]

Prior to the shooting, Vargas had been working as a graphic design artist for Bullet Line, a promotional company, from May to October 2012. Recently, he had been seeing an attorney, Angel Castillo, Jr., regarding "abusive emails and text messages" that were being sent to Bullet Line, starting a week after Vargas's dismissal. He initially denied sending the messages but later admitted to being the sender after being informed by the lawyer that he was possibly committing perjury. On the day of the shooting, after making the 9-1-1 call, Vargas had gone to Castillo's office and demanded to see him, only to learn he was not there at the time. According to a relative of his mother, Vargas feared losing his money due to the case.^[3][14]