On Thursday, police identified three of the five victims — four female bank employees and one female customer — and said for the first time that a sixth person inside the bank in Sebring, Florida, escaped when he heard the shooting begin around 12:30 p.m.
The suspect, Zephen A. Xaver, 21, was arrested Wednesday and charged with five counts of first-degree premeditated murder. Nathaniel Heitkamp, a friend who said he met Xaver five years ago at a mental health facility in Indiana, said, “He had an obsession with violence.”
Chief Karl Hoglund of the Sebring Police Department identified the customer who was killed as Cynthia Lee Watson, 65, and one of the employees as Marisol Lopez, 55.
At a news conference later in the day, a third victim, Ana Piñon-Williams, 37, was identified by her brother-in-law, Tim Williams. He said she was a mother of seven who started working at the bank recently.
Police said they did not understand why Xaver, wearing a T-shirt with an image of four scythe-wielding grim reapers on horseback, carried out the methodical killings in the small city, about 80 miles south of Orlando.
Hoglund said Thursday that Xaver did not know any of the victims and had no known connection to the SunTrust branch. The chief also said there were no signs that he had intended to rob the bank or do anything there other than shoot people.
“We believe it was a random act,” Hoglund said.
Relatives of the two other victims asked that their names be withheld from the public, Hoglund said Thursday, adding that he would honor those requests under a new crime victims’ law in Florida known as Marsy’s Law.
At a court hearing Thursday, Xaver stood before Judge Anthony Ritenour and responded, “Yes, sir,” when asked whether he had no income or assets. The judge appointed a public defender to represent Xaver, who was being held at Highlands County Jail in Sebring, and ordered him held without bond.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.