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Gunman kills 5 in a Florida bank, police say

Gunman Kills 5 in a Florida Bank, Police Say
Gunman Kills 5 in a Florida Bank, Police Say

A gunman killed five people in a bank in Florida on Wednesday, setting off a tense standoff with police negotiators that ended when a SWAT team burst into the building in Sebring and the man surrendered, authorities said.

Shortly after noon, a man contacted emergency dispatchers and said he had fired shots inside a SunTrust Bank branch on a strip of U.S. Route 27 between Lake Jackson and Little Lake Jackson, about 80 miles south of Orlando. The Sebring Police Department and the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office responded, according to a statement from the sheriff’s office.

Chief Karl Hoglund of the Sebring police said that officers had tried to persuade the shooter to exit the bank, but he surrendered only after the sheriff’s SWAT team entered the building. By midafternoon Wednesday, police said there was no longer any danger to the area.

Sheriff Paul Blackman said that authorities expected to release more information about the shooting Thursday morning.

“We are sorry to learn that we have at least five victims, people who were senselessly murdered, as a result of his act in this bank,” Hoglund said at a brief news conference late Wednesday afternoon. He identified the man in custody as Zephen Xaver, 21, a resident of Sebring.

The chief told reporters that investigators had not finished identifying the victims and had not notified the families of those they had identified. “This is a very dynamic and ongoing investigation,” he added.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, who traveled to the area Wednesday afternoon, posted a condolence message from him and his wife, Casey, on Twitter.

“This is a terrible day for Sebring, Highlands County and for the state of Florida,” DeSantis said. “Casey and I extend our most sincere condolences and sympathies to the families and loved ones of the victims. The people of Florida stand with the community of Sebring.”

The governor said the gunman was “an individual that needs to face very swift and exacting justice.”

Don Elwell, a member of the Highlands County Board of County Commissioners, said families of the victims had gathered at a hotel in Sebring to wait for updates from police.

“We have a whole lot more questions right now than answers,” he said. Both the shootings and the lack of information had left the community in shock, he said.

“For us — I have some family in Las Vegas, where there was that big shooting, and they said, ‘We’re sorry to welcome you to our club,'” Elwell said Wednesday, referring to a 2017 shooting that killed 59 people. “Obviously that was a different scale, but here in little Sebring it might as well be same.”

The episode Wednesday is just the latest of several high-profile shootings in Florida that have roiled the state in recent months.

Last February, a young gunman barged into his former high school in Parkland, opening fire on terrified students and teachers and leaving 17 dead. In August, a man with a handgun killed two people at a video game tournament in Jacksonville before fatally shooting himself. And in the fall, a man walked into a yoga studio in Tallahassee, and shot six people — two fatally — before killing himself.

Florida, which bears the official nickname the Sunshine State, is sometimes referred to as the Gunshine State because of its traditionally loose restrictions on firearms. But in March, in the wake of the Parkland shooting, then-Gov. Rick Scott signed an array of gun limits into law that included raising the minimum age to purchase a firearm to 21 and extending the waiting period to three days.

It was the most aggressive action on gun control taken in the state in decades, and the National Rifle Association almost immediately sued.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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