The victims — four female bank employees and one female customer — were the only people inside the bank branch in Sebring, Fla., when the suspect, Zephen A. Xaver, walked in around 12:30 p.m. and opened fire, said the city’s police chief. The chief, Karl Hoglund, identified the customer as Cynthia Watson and one of the employees as Marisol Lopez.
Relatives of the other three victims asked for their names to be withheld from the public, Hoglund said, adding that he would honor those requests under a new crime victims’ law in Florida known as Marsy’s Law. Hoglund said that Xaver, who has been charged with five counts of first-degree premeditated murder, did not know any of the victims and had no known connection to the SunTrust branch in Sebring, a small city about 80 miles south of Orlando.
“Our sisters, our mothers, our daughters and our co-workers,” Hoglund said at a news conference on Thursday morning, choking back tears. “Perhaps most unfortunate is that now we refer to them as victims of a senseless crime.”
After they were shot on Wednesday, the gunman, wearing a T-shirt with an image of four scythe-wielding Grim Reapers on horseback, confessed, police said. He called 911 and said that he had shot five people, and that all of them were dead.
When the authorities arrived, about two minutes after the 911 call, the gunman had barricaded himself inside. He refused to allow police inside to check on the victims, Hoglund said, and refused to compromise with negotiators. After a tense standoff, an armored police vehicle rammed into the bank doors, shattering their glass, shortly before 2 p.m. in order to reach the victims.
Xaver, 21, surrendered to the police, who soon emerged with him in handcuffs. By the time officers forced their way into the bank, all of the victims had died, Hoglund said. So far in the investigation, there are no signs that the gunman intended to rob the SunTrust branch or do anything at the bank other than shoot people, he said.
“We have no information at this time what his true motive may have been,” Hoglund said. “We believe it was a random act. We are still trying to establish what has occurred, the gravity and nature of why it occurred, and try to put it in a perspective that we can understand.”
The authorities on Thursday did not identify the type of firearm used in the attack, and they did not address whether Xaver had legally obtained it.
The shooting on Wednesday was the latest of several high-profile deadly attacks in Florida. The state has traditionally had loose restrictions on firearms, but after a shooting in Parkland, Florida, last February left 17 dead, Rick Scott, who was then the governor, signed an array of gun limits into law that included raising the minimum age to buy a firearm to 21 and creating a three-day waiting period.
At a court hearing on Thursday morning, Xaver, wearing a black-and-white jumpsuit, stood before Judge Anthony Ritenour and responded, “Yes, sir,” when asked whether he had no income or assets. The judge granted a public defender to represent Xaver, who was being held at Highlands County Jail in Sebring, and ordered him held without bond.
Xaver lived in Sebring but had spent most of his life in Plymouth, Indiana, a town about 23 miles south of South Bend, Ind., according to a friend of his, Nathaniel Heitkamp. Xaver had recently trained to be a correctional officer at Avon Park Correctional Institution, a prison about 20 miles north of Sebring, said Patrick Manderfield, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections.
Heitkamp said he met Xaver about five years ago, when they were both teenagers and patients at Michiana Behavioral Health in Plymouth. A representative at Universal Health Services, the company that operates the center, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Over the years, Xaver complained about being bullied at school and disliked by his family, said Heitkamp, who now works in the service industry.
When Xaver got upset, Heitkamp said, he openly talked about a desire to hurt people and how he had access to guns.
“This man did not hide it,” Heitkamp said in an interview on Thursday. “He had an obsession with violence.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.