An Ecuadorian among the dead during a shooting in Florida

Carlos Javier Gavilanes, 33 years old,and of Ecuadorian origin, is one of the seven victims of a shooting that took place in a building on South Florida, occurred on Saturday.

An armed man set his apartment on fire, killed six people and retained two others hostage until the police killed him.

Police received a call at 6:30 on Friday to report that someone had been shot in a five storey building with dozens of apartments in Hialeah, North Miami.

The incident lasted eight hours, in which the attacker, identified as Pedro Vargas, 42, ran through the building and fired randomly and used fuel to start the fire.

The building manager and his wife detected the smoke and ran to the apartment.

Vargas came out, shot them and killed them; then he went to his balcony on the fourth floor and fired into the street, killing a man who was parking his vehicle.

Later, he went down to the third floor, kick opened the door of an apartment and killed a man, his wife and their teenage daughter and entered by force to another residence in which he took two people hostage at gunpoint.

A crisis team of SWAT tried to talk to Vargas from the other side of the door of the apartment where he kept the hostages until they broke into the building, killing Vargas in an exchange of gunfire.