Gunman Enters Miami Newsroom (Miami Herald)

[deminks]

http://cbs3.com/national/topstories_story_328120215.html

(CBS) MIAMI The sixth floor of the Miami Herald newspaper building has been evacuated after a man identified as a former cartoonist for El Nuevo Herald walked into the El Nuevo newsroom with a gun.

Details on this story are developing.

breaking on MSNBC as well.

[lostnotforgotten]

1. The Taser Squad Will Be Dispatched Shortly

eom

[CatWoman]

2. is it Michael Ramirez?

[deminks]

3. No names yet, just saying a free lance person who was "let go"

in February. Has handguns, knives, and some kind of automatic weapon with a scope

[maddezmom]

4. Jose Varela

~snip~
employee, identified as Jose Varela, former cartoonist, is said to be on the sixth floor, where the newspaper is produced. As of noon, the 6th floor was being evacuated.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-1124shotgun,0,4783405.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

[benEzra]

9. Probably not an automatic weapon...

unless the guy was wealthy, well connected, or both. Possession of one without government permission (BATFE Form 4) is a 10-year Federal felony.

I know the "machine gun" statement came from the detective, but he was probably passing along what a witness said.

[DoYouEverWonder]

14. If he's an anti-Castro Cuban

he probably has access to all kinds of weapons, military issue and otherwise.

[Dukkha]

16. CNN said "eyewitnesses described it as a machine gun"

so it's safe to say it was a lookalike sporting rifle which can be acquired in any Florida gun store.

[Vorta]

5. So I guess the postal workers are out of the barrel. Crazies now "going cartoonist".

[benEzra]

8. That's the funniest post I've seen all day. (n/t)

[deminks]

6. Still ongoing. Swat team on site. Not shots fired yet.

Just an update for those who don't have TV.

[Penndems]

7. Sounds like another nut who's a follower of Ann Coulter

n/t

[RagingInMiami]

10. Here's our gunman - for those who read Spanish

http://www.miami.com/mld/elnuevo/news/opinion/2521224.htm

[w4rma]

20. Here is a link to a Google translation of the page. He seems to be a Cuban exile.

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.miami.com%2Fmld%2Felnuevo%2Fnews%2Fopinion%2F2521224.htm&langpair=es%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8

…
JOSE VARELA MINI-BIOGRAFÍA:
I was born in Cuba, in the field - which has been meaning any place that is not Havana - for more than 40 years but they kill to me …
…
What plus I can request to him to the life? I have even enjoyed the fall of Fidel: revolcado by the floor, not I but Castro.
…

[rman]

29. Isn't the Miami Herald rather critical of the neocon cabal,

a rather leftist paper as far as the MSM goes?

And now they suffer fake terrorism of some kind at the hands of a (apparently small-time) anti-Castro activist.

[deminks]

11. Press conference on now (MSNBC)

Police have not talked with the gunman. Only getting info on background from employees. Security says he has a "machine gun". Says gunman may believe that editor has been censoring his work. Everyone that was in the building has been accounted for and are safe. Have blocked off area around building on report that he has "machine gun" with a scope.

[deminks]

12. Police say they now have gunman in custody. No injuries.

Thank goodness.

[krispos42]

13. Interesting use of grammer here:

Regarding a similar event earlier this year at the same paper:
DeFede was fired for recording his telephone conversations with Teele just before the shooting without the politician's permission.

How dare DeFede shoot Teele without Teele's permission!

[Scurrilous]

15. Siege at Miami Herald building ends without violence

<snip>

"After a three-hour standoff at The Miami Herald building, Miami police this afternoon arrested a man who had claimed to be armed and barricaded himself in the office of the top editor of El Nuevo Herald.

The situation apparently ended without violence, police said.

Employees identified the man as El Nuevo Herald cartoonist Jose Varela.

They said Varela appeared agitated and demanded to see El Nuevo Herald's executive editor, Humberto Castelló. He appeared to be armed with a handgun, employees said. El Nuevo Herald is a Spanish-language newspaper published by The Miami Herald Media Co."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16090188.htm

[NastyRiffraff]

17. How did he get in?

When I worked at the WaPo, if you didn't have an employee badge that you swipe to get in, you had to check in with a security guard. If you were an employee who lost/forget the badge, they issued you a temporary (one-day) badge AND called your boss. If the boss wasn't there, they'd call someone in your department.

If you weren't an employee (including ex-employees), you had to have an appointment AND be escorted into the building by whoever the appointment was with.

I assume the Herald has the same, or similar, security protocols in place. Somebody goofed.

[Richard Steele]

18. A lot of buildings waive the badge requirement if you're carrying a rifle.

[LeighAnn]

23. LOL!

:rofl:

[Speaker]

30. That was 'coffee through the nose' funny!

[Blue_Tires]

19. things are getting worse by the hour in the newspaper world

[Judi Lynn]

Oh, yuck. This idiot Varela needs a good swift kick in the pants. What an a-hole.

From the Miami Herald:

Castelló told police that Varela apparently took over his office and trashed it, including a cartoon of the executive editor that Varela had drawn.

Le Fleur quoted Varela as saying: ``I am the publisher until Humberto Castelló gets here.''

Most employees were evacuated from the building, though some staffers remained in the Miami Herald's newsroom to cover the story.

Shortly after the incident began, several people who work on the sixth floor heard police knocking on doors, telling everyone to leave.

''I was in the bathroom,'' said Pamela Vinson. ``I ran outside and saw that everyone had left. I left my purse, my phone, my keys. I couldn't even go home if I wanted to.''

People with company identification badges were allowed to return to work about 3 p.m.

During a brief interview with El Nuevo Herald, Varela threatened to commit violence. Some of what he said seemed confusing and disjointed.

''You are speaking with the new director of the newspaper and I'm here to unmask the true conflicts in the newspaper,'' Varela said. ``They laugh at exiles here. There are problems with payment.''

While barricaded in the office, Varela twice telephoned Miami attorney Joe Garcia. Garcia said that Varela declared his intention to take control of the newspaper.

Garcia said Varela told him in Spanish that, ``Now they're going to have to deal with the truth.''

Garcia also said that Varela told him he had a gun but said that he didn't intend to hurt anyone else or himself.

When Varela called and said that he would demand that editor Castelló be fired and that he was the new editor in charge of the newsroom, Garcia said he thought the cartoonist was joking.

''He's really a comedian, so I figured he was putting me on,'' Garcia said.

The first call was relatively brief, Garcia said. The second lasted more than 15 minutes and Varela sounded distraught about recent events at the newspaper. He said he believed that Cuban exiles were not treated sympathetically.

Many members of South Florida's Cuban-American community and some staffers of El Nuevo Herald have been angered by recent Miami Herald coverage of Radio and TV Martí, U.S. government broadcasting operations that seek an end to the communist regime of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Some of those stories have focused on payments received by several El Nuevo staffers and freelancers for work they conducted for Radio and TV Martí.

Garcia quoted Varela as asking, ``How is it Cubans must suffer all the time?''
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16090188.htm

[Judi Lynn]

21. Photo.

They're going to have to raise their standards for employees at the Cuban-oriented Spanish paper, El Nuevo Herald.

Here's his autobiography, published at the Nuevo Herald's website:

Posted on Fri, Nov. 24, 2006
Varela's biography as posted on El Nuevo Herald's websiteJose Varela's mini-biography, as written on some prior date and posted on the El Nuevo Herald website:

I was born in Cuba, in the country -- which means any place that is not Havana -- more than 40 years ago but it kills me that I do not remember the exact date because I suffer from amnesia due to stress from credit cards.

I remember that I was always a bad student because I spent my time drawing caricatures of the teacher; before long they expelled me from the halls. Since I was not a chief, nor musician, nor a dancer, nor a ballplayer, nor a dissident with projects, I could not leave the country -- so I left on the first boat I could find. That was through Mariel to Key West.

I arrived in Miami and this was a swamp full of crocodiles but later it was dried up. They put up freeways, bridges and cafeterias to sell little Morón cakes and maracuyá juice. Later, a weekly newspaper got the idea (because they were missing the crossword puzzle) to publish my cartoons and later they began to give me prizes.

I really would have liked to enter NASA and become an astronaut, but dreams remain dreams. And in reality, the Man Upstairs gives and takes away. So he gave me a wife who never ages, a daughter who draws better than I can and a stout boy who, if he were to give me a karate chop with his hand, it would send me to the hospital.

What more can I ask of life? What's more, I've enjoyed Fidel's fall: tumbling on the floor, not me but Castro.

I'm a happy man. Even though I cry if I see a movie like Titanic. Because I don't like sinkings.
(snip/)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16090797.htm

[Judi Lynn]

22. Gunman at Miami Herald building surrenders to police (Sun-Sentinel)

Gunman at Miami Herald building surrenders to police
Sun-Sentinel.com
Posted November 24 2006, 6:28 PM EST


BULLETIN: Former El Nuevo Herald cartoonist Jose Varela, 50, has been charged with three counts of aggravated assault after a standoff that lasted just over three and a half hours at The Miami Herald Building, in downtown Miami. Police say the weapon Varela used was a very real looking black MAC-11 type semiautomatic machine gun made of plastic.

Earlier story follows:

A former employee of the El Nuevo Herald, the Miami Herald's Spanish-language daily newspaper, who stormed the building at One Herald Plaza in downtown Miami with a gun shortly before noon is in custody, police said.

The ex-employee, identified as Jose Varela, former political cartoonist, was in the El Nuevo Herald's newsroom for a couple of hours before surrendering to police.

Varela was reportedly looking for Humberto Castello, the executive editor of the Spanish paper. Castello was not in the newsroom at the time, according to police.

Varela was reportedly fired last February. CNN reported Castello was safe and with a police chief.
(snip)

"He said he was going to take down El Nuevo Herald," Prado said. Prado added that Varela told him, "the politics of El Nuevo Herald had changed."
(snip)

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-1124shotgun,0,4783405.story?coll=sfla-sports-utility-panthers&track=mostemailedlink

[benEzra]

25. "a very real looking black MAC-11 type semiautomatic machine gun made of plastic"????

Semiautomatic = NON automatic (fires once when the trigger is pulled)
Machine gun = automatic (sprays bullets when the trigger is pulled)
Made of plastic = not a real gun at all

Gun technology isn't rocket science; the reporter apparently goofed, but I take it the guy was carrying a realistic looking toy pistol styled to look like a submachinegun?

[Paladin]

28. Typical, And Increasingly Tiresome, Gun Evangelist B.S.

n/t

[NickB79]

31. Pointing out obvious factual errors is gun evangelical BS?

Was it medical evangelical BS when people here pointed out Terri Schiavo was clearly in a vegetative state after Frist made is piss-poor "diagnosis" and reported it to Congress?

benEzra noticed technical details that didn't make sense in the story, and was correct that the gun was a toy instead of the real thing.

[benEzra]

32. A square round table, a tall short person, a dark bright room...

Typical, And Increasingly Tiresome, Gun Evangelist B.S.

There is no such thing as a "semiautomatic machine gun," as you well know; it's a self-contradictory statement like square round table, tall short person, or dark bright room. Pointing out the discrepancy is hardly B.S...and it turns out that it was, indeed, a plastic toy, as I suggested.

[Paladin]

33. By The Grace Of God, It Was A Toy This Time

There will be real guns involved in the next few incidents, and blood will be shed. And you'll still be doing your best to shift attention to the types of firearms used, and the media's failure to get every single detail about said firearms correct. As if that's the most important aspect of such occurences. You're not fooling anybody up here in the Real World, no matter how many times you do this little tap dance.....

[benEzra]

34. And had this been a real .45,

you'd probably be taking the position that if only nontraditional looking .45 caliber pistols and protruding rifle handgrips were banned, then criminals and nutjobs would all pack up and go play nice, since they'd never even think of using a Smith & Wesson or a Glock instead of something boxier looking.

Look, I agree with you that criminal gun violence is a Bad Thing. I don't agree with you that banning cosmetic features (protruding rifle handgrips, muzzle threads, boxy-looking pistols) would affect it in any way. Unless you ban all civilian firearms--and somehow enforce your ban more harshly than the War on Drugs--banning modern-looking ones is a study in quixotic pursuits.

Of course, my post didn't address that controversy at all, only pointed out that there is no such thing as a "semiautomatic machine gun," and speculated that the plastic "gun" was actually a toy.

[Paladin]

36. ...my post didn't address that controversy at all...."

My point exactly. The reason you ignore the topic of criminal gun violence is because you and your fellow gun activists don't have any problems with it (other than unfulfilled fantasies of participating in it). The daily content of our very own DU Gun Dungeon provides vivid proof of this.....

[Judi Lynn]

24. Reuters: Gunman enters Miami Herald newspaper offices

Gunman enters Miami Herald newspaper offices
24 Nov 2006 18:40:40 GMT
Source: Reuters

~snip~
Miami Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler said the man apparently believed the newspaper was not being properly run.

El Nuevo reporter Rui Ferreira said in a blog that he had spoken to the gunman, who told him, "You are speaking to the new director of the newspaper and I am going to unmask all of the true conflicts in the newspaper."

Varela called the paper a "pigsty", said it made fun of the Cuban exile community in Miami and that the paper paid poorly.

"They've been making fun of people long enough and today they will see it end in violence. But someone has to pay and that person is going to be (Humberto) Castello." he said, referring to the Spanish-language paper's executive editor.

Ferreira said Varela had been in the newsroom a week ago and told former colleagues he had bought himself a sawn-off shotgun and an Uzi submachine gun because he felt unsafe in Jupiter, a Florida town he moved to after his recent divorce.
(snip/...)

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N24365789.htm

[benEzra]

26. Update - the gun was a plastic toy.

He must have painted it to look real.

[Judi Lynn]

27. Miami cartoonist is held after newspaper standoff

Miami cartoonist is held after newspaper standoff
No one is hurt in the three-hour incident, which highlights political tensions among Cuban exiles in the city.
By Carol J. Williams, Times Staff Writer
November 25, 2006


MIAMI —

~snip~
In September, the Herald disclosed that at least eight journalists for its Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald prepared articles and broadcasts for Radio and TV Marti. Those stations, financed by the U.S. government and staffed by prominent Cuban exiles, have long been criticized as wasteful and ineffectual because few Cubans on the island can receive them.

The Herald's exposure of El Nuevo Herald involvement in U.S.-government financed propaganda has driven a wedge between the two newspaper staffs and led to the resignation of the papers' publisher.

It has also widened a divide in the broader Cuban American community, with some social leaders seeking more engagement with Cuba and hard-liners who fled Castro's 1959 revolutionary triumph insisting the U.S. continue boycotting the island.

The Miami Herald this month revised its position on the U.S. economic embargo and travel ban against Cuba, recommending in an editorial that Washington policymakers consider a less confrontational course to influence the island's adjustment to a post-Castro era.
(snip/...)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-herald25nov25,1,5780152.story?coll=la-news-politics-national&track=crosspromo

[slackmaster]

35. Headline should read "Toy Gunman..."

But seriously, I'm glad nobody got hurt.

[Scurrilous]

37. El Nuevo cartoonist released from jail

<snip>

"The El Nuevo cartoonist who barricaded himself inside the newsroom Friday with a toy gun was released from jail late Monday after posting $7,500 bail.

José Manuel Varela, who turned 51 Monday, left Turner Guilford Knight jail at 9:35 Monday night wearing blue scrubs. He hugged friends on hand to greet him, spoke briefly in Spanish and climbed into a black Jaguar.

On Friday, Varela barricaded himself inside the newsroom of El Nuevo Herald, sparking a tense 3½ hour standoff before surrendering peacefully.

On Saturday, Varela was assigned a public defender and ordered to undergo a competency examination. As a condition of his release, Varela told he must stay away from the newspaper's Biscayne Bay building and all employees."

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/16110454.htm