Former employee in Orlando kills five people, then himself

ORLANDO, Fla.—Jennifer Blevins panicked when she heard the news about the shooting at the business northeast of Orlando where her father works. She tried calling but couldn’t reach him.

“I saw the post on Facebook, and my heart sank,” Blevins said Monday morning.

Hours later, her worst fears were confirmed: Her father, 69-year-old Robert Snyder, was one of the five people killed by a former disgruntled employee at Fiamma before he turned the gun on himself.

John Robert Neumann Jr., armed with a handgun, a large hunting knife and possibly some smaller knives, walked into Fiamma through a rear door. He roamed the building and reloaded his gun at least once, singling out his victims, Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said.

“One of the surviving witnesses said (Neumann) pointed the gun at her and told her to get out of there,” he said.

Brenda Montanez-Crespo, 44; Kevin Clark, 53; Jeffrey Roberts, 57; and Kevin Lawson, 47, were also killed in the attack.

“Most of the victims were shot in the head; some were shot multiple times,” Demings said. He added that eight other people in the building were not injured.

Neumann, 45, who was discharged from the Army in 1999, killed himself before deputies approached. He had been fired in April from Fiamma, which makes awnings for RVs and campers.

Todd Bluewater found his business surrounded by sheriff’s deputies and blocked off when he arrived Monday morning. He runs Cool Blue Customs, which has shared a building with Fiamma for the past three years.

Fiamma employs about eight people regularly, he said, and he knew all of them.

“Brenda was like a ray of sunshine … her smile could light up a room. Kevin was like an uncle and Bob was totally awesome,” Bluewater said.

“They were all good people. Family people. My heart goes out to all their families.”

It’s unclear what motivated the attack at Fiamma. Neumann had a “negative relationship” with one of the victims, the sheriff said.

Demings also said the Sheriff’s Office responded to Fiamma about three years ago, when Neumann allegedly battered an employee. There were no charges at that time, and that employee was not one of the people killed Monday.

The shooting comes a week before the one-year anniversary of the Pulse nightclub massacre that killed 49 people, but it is not a terrorist attack, officials said.

“The situation here appears to be very different from the situation at Pulse,” Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs said.

Fiamma is in an industrial area on Forsyth Road at Hanging Moss Road with a steel business, glass company and restaurant equipment business nearby.

The company is more than 70 years old and specializes in “lightweight easy to operate RV awnings with hand-built craftsmanship,” according to the company’s web site.

It is headquartered in the Italian town of Cardano al Campo, northwest of Milan, according to the company’s site. Fiamma supplies awnings and related parts to RV dealers across the United States and Canada and also sells directly to customers.

It registered in the state of Florida in 1991, according to Florida’s corporate records.

The scene around the building was chaos after the shooting at about 8 a.m., with roads closed and police cars surrounding the area. Demings said his deputies arrived within two minutes of getting the call.

Luis Gonzalez, who works at Esperanza Shoe Repair LLC across the street, said he was outside when he heard a woman in the Fiamma parking lot.

“I looked and the lady is green,” he said. “I said ‘ Oh my God.’ It looked like she was in shock.”

Minutes later, the place was crawling with law enforcement, he said.

Shelley Adams said her sister, who works at Fiamma, was in the bathroom when she heard shots.

“She came out and saw a man on the floor,” she said.

Adams said her sister is OK. “God had his hand on her,” she said. Adams was at a loss of words as to why someone would shoot up a business.

“How do you take people’s lives?” Adams said. “That’s shocking.”

Authorities set up a center at Full Sail University, about a mile from the scene, for family members to contact the survivors and learn who the victims were.

A few dozen people went inside over the course of two hours. One said she was the mother-in-law of an employee but declined to give her name; another said he was a co-worker who had been at the scene of the shooting that morning.

Two chaplains, an Orange County Fire and Rescue truck, and paramedics arrived, along with two people carrying boxes of tissues.

Gov. Rick Scott, in a statement, said he was briefed about the “tragic incident.”

“I ask all Floridians to pray for the families impacted by this senseless act of violence,” his statement said.

By Monday evening, deputies and U.S Marshals surrounded Neumann’s home in the Lake of the Woods mobile home complex, just off U.S. Highway 17-92 in Seminole County.

Officers wearing tactical gear and armed with guns looked under the single-wide trailer and used flashlights to look through windows before going inside to search.

Shortly before 8 p.m., authorities loaded up evidence from the gunman’s home, including several stacks of paper, a long and narrow object and other items in large yellow envelopes. The entrances were then fully opened back up for residents in the community.

At Fiamma, the bodies of the victims were removed from the office at the end of the day.