Suspect in Orlando shooting had money woes

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A man who was deeply in debt opened fire yesterday at the engineering firm that fired him two years ago, killing one person and wounding five, authorities said.

As officers led a handcuffed Jason Rodriguez into a police station, a reporter asked the divorced 40-year-old why he had attacked his former colleagues.

"Because they left me to rot," said Rodriguez, who recently told a bankruptcy judge he was making less than $30,000 a year at a Subway sandwich shop and owed nearly $90,000.

The shooting on the eighth floor of an office tower paralyzed downtown Orlando for three hours. Police quickly tracked Rodriguez to his mother's home, spotted him through a window and ordered him to come out.

He surrendered peacefully and was in custody last night. Police said he apologized as officers handcuffed him.

"I'm just going through a tough time right now. I'm sorry," officers quoted him as saying.

All the victims worked at the firm of Reynolds, Smith and Hills, where Rodriguez was an entry-level engineer for 11 months before he was let go in June 2007, the company said.

The five wounded people were in stable condition at Orlando hospitals and police say all are expected to survive. The slain victim was identified as Otis Beckford, 26.

Rodriguez worked on drawings in the firm's transportation group.

"This is really a mystery to us," said Ken Jacobson, the firm's general legal counsel and chief financial officer. "There was nothing to indicate any hard feelings."

He did not know why Rodriguez would say the company had left him "to rot."

"It's been 2½ years," Jacobson said. "We don't know where he's been or what he's done."

But Rodriguez told detectives that the company had fired him without cause and had made him look incompetent.

He told them the Subway shop couldn't give him enough hours, and he later filed for unemployment. He expected to get a check recently but when it didn't arrive he blamed Reynolds, Smith and Hills, thinking it was harming his efforts to qualify, police said.