Pedro Alberto Vargas

Pedro Alberto Vargas was born on October 3, 1970, in Havana, Cuba, to a family of educators. His father passed away in either 1991 or 1992. Between 1990 and 1994, Vargas attended the University of Pedagogical Sciences, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in technical education. He later immigrated to the United States with his mother, Esperanza Patterson, in the mid-1990s after winning the U.S. visa lottery. He became a naturalized American citizen in 2004.

Vargas lived with his mother in apartment #408 of the Todel Apartments in Hialeah, Florida, beginning in 1999. Although he had no significant criminal history, neighbors described him as socially withdrawn and frequently at odds with his elderly mother. Vargas lifted weights at LA Fitness, reportedly to release frustration, and was known to use steroids, which he blamed for his hair loss. Several people close to him noted that he harbored resentment over bad experiences with women and displayed signs of deepening paranoia.

Professionally, Vargas was a trained graphic designer. He earned an associate degree in graphic design from Miami Dade College in 2004 and later worked in the college’s media services department. While his early performance was well-reviewed, he was eventually forced to resign in 2008 after being caught downloading inappropriate materials, including computer hacking tutorials from The Anarchist Cookbook. Not long after his departure, the college and other institutions connected to his former employment received anonymous threats believed to be linked to Vargas, though this was never conclusively proven.

He later worked for a Miami company and a promotional firm, Bullet Line, but was again fired after a short period. Vargas reportedly sent harassing emails and texts to Bullet Line and became embroiled in a legal matter, for which he hired attorney Angel Castillo, Jr. On the day of the shooting, Vargas had gone to Castillo’s office but left after finding the lawyer was not there. Earlier that same day, Vargas had made a 9-1-1 call reporting bizarre claims, including being targeted by witchcraft and being followed.

The deadliest mass shooting in Hialeah, Florida’s history unfolded in the evening hours of July 26, 2013. At around 6:30 p.m., Pedro Alberto Vargas set fire to $10,000 in cash inside his apartment, then doused the unit with a flammable substance and ignited it. When the apartment building’s manager, 79-year-old Italo Pisciotti, and his 69-year-old wife Samira came to investigate the smoke, Vargas stepped into the hallway and fatally shot both of them with a legally purchased Glock 17 9mm pistol.

He then moved to his apartment balcony on the fourth floor and fired randomly into the street, killing 33-year-old Carlos Javier Gavilanes, who had just parked his car. Continuing his rampage, Vargas kicked in the door of apartment #304 and gunned down the three residents inside: 64-year-old Patricio Simono, his 51-year-old wife Merly S. Niebles, and her 17-year-old daughter Priscilla Perez.

Law enforcement quickly arrived on the scene, engaging in a five-hour gun battle with Vargas as he roamed the stairwells of the building. Eventually, Vargas broke into apartment #525 and held the two occupants, Zoeb and Farida Nek, hostage for approximately three hours while sporadically firing at police outside. When negotiations failed, a SWAT team was deployed. Using a distraction device, officers rescued the hostages and killed Vargas in a brief firefight just after midnight on July 27.

Vargas was found with two fully loaded magazines still on him. All six of his victims were unrelated to his initial grievances, and there was no clear motive beyond paranoia, rage, and possible mental health decline. The shooting shocked the city, becoming the deadliest in Hialeah’s history and one of the worst in the Miami-Dade region in decades.