One Killed, Five Injured as Laid-off Engineer Opens Fire in Orlando

One person was killed and five others were wounded as an ex-employee of an engineering consulting firm, laid off from his job in 2007, opened fire at his former work place in Orlando, Florida, on Friday.

According to Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer and Police Chief Val Demings, the suspected gunman was arrested at his mother’s home after he fled the scene causing panic for several hours at the Gateway Centre building in downtown Orlando.

Police named the suspect as 40-year-old Jason Rodriguez, who had worked for 11 months as an engineer at the Orlando office of the Reynolds, Smith & Hill consulting company before being laid off for “deficient” performance, a company spokesman said.

A TV channel relayed footage of Rodriguez being led away in handcuffs and in response to reporters’s query as to why he opened fire, he said, “They left me to rot.”

The shooting occurred a day after a mass shooting at a US army base in Texas which killed 13 people.