Zogby said Vargas then ran through the building, firing "at random, in a very irrational fashion."
"He kept running from us as he fired at us, and we fired at him," Zogby said.
He forced his way into another apartment and took two people hostage at gunpoint.
Ester Lazcano, who lives two doors down from where the shooting began, said she was in the shower when she heard the first shots, then there were at least a dozen more.
"I felt the shots," she said.
Miriam Valdes, 70, lives on the building's top floor ? one floor above where the shooting began. She said she heard gunfire and later saw smoke and what smelled like burned plastic entering her apartment, and ran in fear to the unit across the hall.
A crisis team was able to briefly establish communication with Vargas. Sgt. Eddie Rodriguez said negotiators and a police special weapons and tactics team tried talking with him from the other side of the door of the unit where he held the hostages.
Valdes said she heard about eight officers talking with him as she stayed holed up at the neighbouring apartment. She said officers told him to "let these people out."
"We're going to help you," she said they told him.
She said the gunman first asked for his girlfriend and then his mother but refused to cooperate.
Rodriguez said the talks eventually "just fell apart." Officers stormed the building, fatally shooting the gunman in an exchange of gunfire.
"They made the decision to go in there and save and rescue the hostages," Rodriguez said. Both hostages survived.
Neighbours said the shooter lived in the building with his mother. Police don't believe she was home at the time of the shootings.
"He was a good son," Lazcano said. "He'd take her in the morning to run errands" and took her to doctor appointments.
But Valdes said he was known as a difficult person who sometimes got into fights and yelled at his mother.
"He was a very abusive person," she said. "He didn't have any friends there."
Zogby said police are investigating any possible disputes between Vargas and the building manager but don't yet have any information on a possible motive. "Nobody seems to know why he acted the way he acted," Zogby said.
He said police had not responded to any prior calls at his home or found any criminal background on Vargas.
On Saturday, Agustin Hernandez ? the brother-in-law of victim Niebles ? moved his relatives' things out of the apartment building and into his car. Among them were several photos, one showing the teen smiling in a red graduation gown, another of his sister-in-law in a white dress and pearls.
Hernandez said Simono was a friend of the building manager.
Police didn't identify the slain teen, but Hernandez's wife, Zulima Niebles, said her name was Priscila Perez.
Marcela Chavarri, director of the American Christian School, said Perez was about to enter her senior year at the school.
"She was a lovely girl," Chavarri said through tears. "She was always happy and helping her classmates."
In Hialeah ? a suburb of about 230,000 residents, about three-quarters of whom are Cuban or Cuban-American ? the street in the quiet, apartment-building-lined neighbourhood was still blocked by tape Saturday afternoon.
The building where the standoff occurred is an ageing, beige structure with an open terrace in the middle. It has 90 to 95 units. The apartment where neighbours said the shooting started was charred, the door and ceiling immediately outside burned black.
Zogby called the whole building a crime scene. "He probably fired dozens of shots during the whole incident," he said.
"It could have been a much, much more dangerous situation."
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