Orlando gunman caught after mass shooting in high-rise

By The Associated Press
Friday, November 6th, 2009 -- 3:29 pm
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A gunman opened fire Friday in the offices of an engineering firm where he was let go more than two years ago, authorities said, killing one person and injuring five others.

Jason Rodriguez, 40, surrendered about three hours later, after officers saw him through the window of his mother's home and asked him to come outside, Orlando Police Chief Val Demings said.

Asked by a reporter outside the police station why he did it, he replied: "Because they left me to rot."

Demings said Rodriguez brought a handgun to the firm in a downtown office tower where he once worked as an engineer, but investigators are not sure what his motive was.

"This is a tragedy, no doubt about it, especially on the heels of the tragedy in Fort Hood that is on our minds," Demings said. "I'm just glad we don't have any more fatalities or any more injuries than we currently have."

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Charles W. Price, an attorney who represented Rodriguez in a bankruptcy case, declined to comment.

Camille Previlon told The Associated Press her uncle, engineer Guy Lungenbel, was shot in the back and was able to talk but had not said much about the shooting.

"He is stable," she said. "He's just hurting real bad in the back."

Everyone who was shot was in the offices of Reynolds Smith & Hill, on the eighth floor. The five survivors were in stable condition, Demings said.

Company spokesman Mike Bernos said Rodriguez was an entry-level engineer who was fired in June 2007 after working there for a year.

"His performance wasn't up to our standards, so we terminated him," Bernos said. There had been no contact between the company and Rodriguez since then.

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Story comments are below...
  • miggy
    Wow! Texas yesterday, Florida today! Sure smells like the Bush Crime Family is having a series of temper tantrums…
  • horatio7
    "Bush Crime Family"? That's so 2003. Get some new material.
  • motorfingaz
    How about this one :


    The " Republican Crime Syndicate ".


    Now, isn't that better for ya?
  • dennycrane
    "KFC"

    The "Klan of Fucking Crime."
  • socialismorbust
    This is the face of the future. People getting tossed aside like so many apple peelings who lose hope WILL, eventually, act out. The tip of the proverbial iceberg hasn't even been chipped away yet.
  • tootiredoftheright
    He was fired two years ago. Sounds like a routine firing not due to the economy.
  • Savantster
    .
    "two years" is a generic construct (as in, they weren't saying 730 days ago).. and in mid 2007 is when this "started".. and companies have been "downsizing" for a very very VERY long time. In fact, when I got my job at MCI in 2000, they put on a hiring freeze and people started to be let go.. from then until 2006 (when I left) our team of 21 had been cut down to 6 and "contractors" were being given projects to "help" with (which they totally screwed up and caused our team to have to redo, on our own time, to make sure our systems kept working).

    So, if by "routine" you mean the slow march of good jobs out of America, I guess you have a point.

    And nothing you postulated removes one bit of truth of what socialismorbust posited.
  • thepoliticalcat
    The economic recession started in 2007. I, and a lot of my colleagues, were laid off then, as were thousands in our hitherto "invulnerable" sector of the economy. Are people suffering from memory loss?
  • JamIam9
    He was 'left to rot' by not being a better employee. So now people have to continue paying money to subpar employees who don't deserve their paychecks? His position was terminated two years ago, plenty enough time to get a new job, however, he sucked and couldn't get one because he didn't deserve to be paid. His actions only prove what a piece of excrement he is.
  • Savantster
    .
    see my above post...

    and the company is just about guaranteed to say that exact thing, no matter the cause of termination. Why? If they say anything else, controversy could ensue. You're defending the company like it is infallible, clearly that's not the reality of things.

    In fact, you're defending an inherently broken system that is not sustainable and one that is guaranteed to put billions at odds with the few people who have laid claim to all the world's resources. People are becoming obsolete as "workers", but if you don't "work", you don't live. Humans aren't likely to just lie down and die quietly like the ruling elite want them to.

    www.thevenusproject.com and www.thezeitgeistmovement.com .. go learn something.
  • thepoliticalcat
    You know, in this "at will" employment market, an employer can say anything after they fire you, to justify your firing. Very often employers will decide that they need to let go of certain people - older employees, sick employees, employees who are planning to get pregnant - and, ever since Bush, the employee has the burden of proof, which makes it harder for the employee to sue. So what the employers do is called "laying a paper trail." Go talk to your HR folks about that sometime. They'll tell you how it's done.
  • JamIam9
    So you're defending the coldblooded murder of innocent people by a grownup crybaby? Just because his parents had sex however many years ago and conceived his pathetic ass someone else has to work, study, and save just to provide that piece of crap with a nice cushy job?! When you are born you are entitled to nothing but your life, your liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness, not happiness but the opportunity to pursue happiness. Apparently he couldn't pursue it very well and was not worth employing. If you want anything at all, it is up to you and you alone to go out and get it, and once you get it, it is up to you to keep it. No one is entitled to have anything given to them, anything at all. If you can't get what you want it is up to you to try harder, If this guy tried harder maybe he could have kept his job. His employers did not 'leave him to rot', they decided they were better off without him. He needed to prove his worth to them in order to be kept around. And yesterday he proved what his worth is, just a piece of crap crybaby who blames his problems on other people.
  • thepoliticalcat
    Straw man. Go ahead, argue with yourself as much as you like, don't involve me. moron. I sincerely hope the same thing happens to you, not because I wish you ill but because it will give you a chance to grow a little empathy. Schmuck.
  • JamIam9
    Actually I got fired in August from my job for taking the time to do my job thoroughly. I know what its like. So I also know what a $hithead you got to be to kill people over that you pathetic douche.
  • pongagt
    Don't forget salary employees that won't work all the free overtime the company wants. His problem was that he lived in Florida where it was easier to get away with not paying unemployment. It happened to me in Ohio and they tried screwing me out of my unemployment but thankfully it didn't work. I'm surprise this doesn't happen more often to engineers who's lives are devastated and they are left with student loans with no realistic chance of getting another real job in today's job market.
  • buckqjohnson
    This is the face of the future, and it will start to get worse. You see as a society we have always been taught either directly or by inuendo and such that us Americans are the chosen ones. We can do no wrong, we are this we are that etc. etc., and from there they split it even between races by them saying the same thing for each race. The problem is that all this propaganda was just that propaganda to make us feel good while the elilte of the country and the world robbed us blind. The allowed us to be bullies and overbearing and rude to other groups and people because it focused our energies to those people and not to the individuals robbing them. Now reality is sitting in and we have been living on a credit card for decades and the bill is coming due. People are being tossed aside in order for their supervisor to keep their job and in order for the company to maintain and become profitable. Peoples world view of themselves the country and their "race" are being turned upside down.

    This guy was fired 2 years ago and during that time either couldn't find a job or found one that paid alot less. He saw everything falling apart in his life and decided enough was enough. And he decided what he was going to do (as our society has been teaching our people) attack the problem and force it to his will, which doesn't work. When he said they left him to rot, that means that they tossed him out from the company and didn't give two cents about him except as a number. Guess what, that's capitalism. People who thought they where part of the IN group are finally seeing that they aren't. I remember almost a month ago they where saying both from the fed and other pundits that the unemployment rate MAY break 10% sometime in late 2010. And guess what, the unemployment rate came out today and it was 10.2%. They weren't wrong in a sense, they where trying to hide the bad facts from the public because the elite and the fed know what the american people are like. We have been dumbed down, told to respect authority and powerful bullies and at the same time dismiss the idea of care and compassion for other people. We just haven't figured out that this tool could be used against us.

    Americans are figuring out that they aren't special, they are like any other people across the planet. When we finally go into the a third world govt., people will go insane with rage. Nobody likes to know that they where fools and useful idiots to a power system that used us to make our own prison.
  • yvonneo
    I agree. In addition to dumbing down and propagandizing the American people so they could feel superior to others, I think it was also to keep the people divided and distracted fighting each other rather than focusing their energies on those who have taken control of our govt and been robbing us blind for years--the banksters/corporations. And let's face it, most of our elected officials--both right and left--have been bought and paid for and are now working in the interests of these same banksters/corporations over the interests of those they were elected to represent.
  • miggy
    The media or telecommunications infrastructure must be sending out the activation triggers for the MKULTRA (Manchurians) in the pipeline. Why Texas and Florida?

    Long suspected the rendition subjects and probably some at Gitmo were ‘manufactured’ for use at strategic dates. Gitmo like european prisons are not for protecting the world from so called terrorists. They are ‘factories’ for making future pawns of the NWO & DoD agenda.
  • kayttt2000
    You are correct,,,

    Gitmo,European,,and USA prisons..

    A law has the bad boys surrounded,,so they are activating there pawns..via Mk Ultra..

    They say the Homeland Nazi Fusion(Confusion) Centers have some nasty technology aimed at the American people..
  • miggy
    Interesting to note in these reports, however, about Major Hasan is his past psychiatric training, paid for by the US Military, at Virginia Tech University where he graduated from that schools Center for Applied Behavior Systems with a degree in biochemistry, a school which FSB reports have long warned “is most likely” one of the US Department of Defenses top PSYOP training centers and where in April, 2007, it suffered the worst school massacre in US history when a Chinese student named Seung-Hui Cho, reported to be a subject to mind-control experiments, single-handedly gunned down 32 fellow students.

    Seung-Hui Cho’s sister is or was a high level employee in the State Department.
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