ORLANDO, Fla. — A man who was so deep in debt that he did not have the money to visit his son 30 minutes away opened fire Friday at the engineering firm that fired him two years ago, killing one person and wounding five, authorities said.
As officers led a handcuffed Jason Rodriguez into a police station, a reporter asked the divorced 40-year-old why he had attacked his former colleagues.
“Because they left me to rot,” said Rodriguez, who recently told a bankruptcy judge he was making less than $30,000 a year at a Subway sandwich shop and owed nearly $90,000.
The shooting on the eighth floor of an office tower paralyzed downtown Orlando for three hours. Police tracked Rodriguez to his mother’s home. He surrendered peacefully and was in custody Friday evening, though he had not yet been formally charged in the shootings.
All of the victims worked at the firm of Reynolds, Smith and Hills, where Rodriguez was an entry-level engineer for 11 months before he was let go in June 2007, the company said.
Police said he used a handgun in the shooting, but they did not release additional details.
The five wounded people were in stable condition at Orlando hospitals. The person who died was not identified.
Rodriguez worked on drawings in the firm’s transportation group, but his supervisors said his performance was not up to their standards, and when he did not improve, he was fired. The company did not hear from him again.
Les Winograd, a spokesman for Milford, Conn.- based Subway Restaurants, said Rodriguez had worked for one of the company’s sandwich shops in the Orlando area until six weeks ago.
His former mother-in-law, America Holloway, told The Associated Press that Rodriguez and her daughter, Neshby, were married for about 6 1/2 years before divorcing several years ago. They have an 8-year-old son who lives with Neshby in Kissimmee, about a half-hour away.
Holloway said the couple lived with her in Orlando for several years and that Rodriguez abused her daughter.
After the divorce, Rodriguez seldom saw his son, but he called last week while the child was at Holloway’s house and the boy asked him why he did not come over, too. “He said, ‘Because I don’t have any money. I don’t have a job. I don’t have anything to eat.When things get better, I’ll come see you,’ ” Holloway said Rodriguez told his son.
