More on OFFICER.com
Watch Fla. SWAT Sniper Shoot Through Monitor to Stop Hostage-Taker
- Security camera footage shows a sniper with the Lee County Sheriff's Office SWAT unit making a critical shot to fatally shoot a man with two hostages at a Fort Myers bank.
A hostage in an intense and deadly Florida bank standoff last year has gone to work for the law enforcement agency that helped save his life, and he and the sheriff's office SWAT sniper who fatally shot the hostage-taker talked about the horrific incident for the first time.
“I’m very proud of him as a fellow citizen and as a human. He’s a rock star,” Lt. Paul Nader, a Lee County SWAT sniper, told WINK-TV about Gus Rengifo, a teller at a Bank of America in Fort Myers who played a part in ending a Feb. 6, 2024, hostage situation.
The incident began when Sterling Alavache, 36, entered the bank, claiming he had a gun and a bomb. He jumped over a counter and took Rengifo and a woman hostage.
At one point during the standoff, Alavche held a knife to Rengifo's throat, the teller said. When a sheriff's office SWAT team reached the scene, deputies deployed a robotic dog to get a visual layout of the situation.
“(Alavache) got very nervous as soon as the Robo-Dog comes,” Rengifo told WINK.
That's when the SWAT team began to advance toward the bank lobby, and Alavache held a knife to the throat of the woman as he positioned himself between the two hostages. In his role as sniper, Nader began calculating how he could take out Alavache to end the situation.
"I see the Dell logo there. That’s the round in the middle of that monitor. That’s a Dell logo," said Nader as he commented on video footage from the incident. "I had my crosshairs right at the top of that monitor, and as soon as he goes down, squats down a little bit, that’s when I pull the trigger, and I hit him."
Nader's shot went through the monitor and tussled the woman's hair as it rocket past her before striking the suspect. Alavache was pronounced dead at the scene.
In narrated video footage released shortly after the incident, Lt. Todd Olmer explained that a .308-caliber bullet was specifically chose because of "its known ballistic reliability traveling through intermediate barriers."
“Due to the suspect’s limited exposure, the sniper took a planned and deliberate shot through a computer monitor, striking the suspect in the center of the forehead, killing him instantly,” he said.
“Firing through barriers is a trained and routinely practiced skill by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office special operations unit snipers,” Olmer added.
Nader credits Rengifo with helping him make the shot. The teller had kept his cool and also helped keep Alavache visible to deputies.
“I haven’t talked to him like this before, and hearing how he kept this hostage taker pushed over in our view, I look at him as way more of a hero than I am because he’s the one in danger. He’s the one with a knife against his throat,” said Nader.
Following the incident, Rengifo left his teller job and began working at the Lee County Sheriff's Office.
