Cops: Killer ‘never made any threats’ to children

ORLANDO — The gunman holding four children hostage in an apartment after a shootout with police did not give any indication while talking to negotiators that he planned to harm the kids, police Chief John Mina said Tuesday evening in offering more details about the nearly daylong standoff.

“He never made any threats to the children. In these types of situations, that’s our biggest concern,” Mina said. “We never want to do something that’s going to provoke the suspect.”

Mina said police never specifically heard the children while negotiating with Gary Wayne Lindsey Jr. and don’t know when they were shot to death.

But when SWAT officers breached several windows of the apartment about 8:30 p.m. on Monday, Mina said they saw that at least one child was already dead — so they went in, using gas. Inside, they found the bodies of two children in one bedroom and the two others in another bedroom.

The police chief said Lindsey — a convicted felon on probation, who was prohibited by law from possessing guns — had two rifles, two shotguns and a handgun. Mina said he believed the guns had been left to Lindsey after his father’s death.

Though one officer fired at Lindsey during an initial shootout that left Officer Kevin Valencia critically wounded, Mina said he had no reason to believe any of the children — identified by a representative of their mother as Irayan, 11; Lillia, 10; Aidan, 6; and Dove, 1 — had been injured by friendly fire.

“Based on everything I’ve seen, it was not our bullets that killed those children,” Mina said.

Their mother is in a “deep state of shock,” attorney Walter Benenati said.

“Everybody loved these children and the fact that they were lost like this is just unfathomable,” he said.