Pedro Alberto Vargas: The 2013 Hialeah, Florida Mass Murder
Overview
On the evening of July 26, 2013, 42-year-old Pedro Alberto Vargas carried out a mass shooting at the Todel Apartments in Hialeah, Florida, killing six people before he was shot dead by a SWAT team in the early hours of July 27. The rampage unfolded inside and around the apartment complex at approximately 1485 West 46th Street and became the deadliest mass shooting in Hialeah’s history.
Lead-up to the Attack
Earlier that day, Vargas placed a 9-1-1 call reporting paranoid fears that he was being followed and targeted with “witchcraft,” behavior his mother also described as unusual. Hours later, around 6:30 p.m., he set fire to his own apartment after reportedly burning $10,000 in cash, an arson that triggered the deadly sequence to come.
The Shooting and Hostage Standoff
When building managers arrived to investigate smoke from Vargas’s unit, he stepped into the hallway with a Glock 17 pistol and shot them both. He then fired repeatedly from his fourth-floor balcony toward the street, killing a motorist who had just parked. Moving through the building, Vargas kicked open another apartment door, killing three residents inside. Police engaged him in running gunfire within stairwells over several hours. Eventually, Vargas forced entry into a fifth-floor unit and took two hostages—Zoeb and Farida Nek—for roughly three hours until a six-officer SWAT team breached the unit, rescued the hostages, and fatally shot Vargas, ending the eight-hour ordeal shortly after midnight on July 27.
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