Trouble lay hidden in shooting suspect's past

By KATHRYN WEXLER, JO BECKER and SARAH SCHWEITZER

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 1, 2000

MOBILE, Ala. -- On the surface, Silvio Izquierdo-Leyva's life seemed filled with great devotion and contemplation, but was otherwise unremarkable.

Silvio Izquierdo-Leyva, right, makes his first court appearance in Tampa on Friday. [WTVT-Ch. 13]

But signs that not all was well began to show long before a half-hour of madness Thursday when Tampa police say he pumped bullets into eight people, killing five of them.

A couple of years ago, when Izquierdo worked in a metal factory in Mobile, he burst into a co-worker's apartment at 7 a.m. Izquierdo, a Cuban refugee, stabbed the man with a kitchen knife, cutting deeply into his leg, said Maria Colon, his Catholic Social Services caseworker.

He then disappeared for days. When Colon finally ran into him, she asked: "Do you have something to tell me?"

He nodded. "Yes, -- I need help," he said, and started to cry. "I don't know what happened; it wasn't me. It was like I lost my mind."

Gunman shatters lives of 5 families Common, legal weapons used in hotel slayings No Santeria ties are seen in shootings Hotels reappraise hiring in light of shootings

Police said they still had no idea what triggered Thursday's violence.

"Only thing new is that we are asking if anyone was a witness or was confronted by this individual, if they haven't talked to the police, we'd like them to contact us and we'd like to interview them," Cole said.

Izquierdo was never charged in the Mobile stabbing and had no criminal history there. Nor did he run afoul of the law in Tampa, where he has lived for about a year. But to some, not all was right with Izquierdo, 36.

In 1995, Izquierdo and his brother Pedro started out for the U.S. by raft from their native Cuba. Along with thousands of others, they were soon herded to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, on Cuba's southeastern shore.

It was not clear Friday whether Izquierdo had a history of violence in Cuba. In the mid-1990s, rafters arriving from Guantanamo were screened by immigration officials.

The Izquierdo brothers ended up in Mobile, sponsored by Colon's organization. Silvio Izquierdo lived in several small, low-income apartments in high-crime neighborhoods crowded with other Cubans.

But he worked hard to better his situation. He held down a job in packaging at Ocal Inc., a pipe factory near the city's shipyards where Colon said he was considered a good worker. He listened to videos to learn English. He found an American girlfriend.

But something haunted Izquierdo, said his friend Jose Somontes-Bello.

Izquierdo left behind a wife and a child in Cuba, Colon said. She said he rarely spoke of them. Somontes-Bello said he had a reason to stay quiet.

"His wife . . . got killed in a motorcycle accident," said Somontes-Bello, who lives in the same Mobile neighborhood where Izquierdo had lived and knew him in Havana. "I think it happened after he got here. . . . Everything changed about him."

In Havana, Somontes-Bello said, his friend was a normal, if serious, man. In America, he began drinking for the first time. Though Izquierdo wasn't a heavy drinker, Somontes-Bello said there was a loneliness about him. At parties, it wasn't unusual to find him on the outskirts of the group, keeping quiet.

About a year ago, Izquierdo made his way to Tampa and moved in with his sister-in-law, Angela Vazquez, who supervises housekeeping at the Radisson Bay Harbor Hotel and who told police Izquierdo ran after her at the hotel Thursday and tried to shoot her.

Somontes-Bello said Pedro was worried.

"I know he's crazy," Pedro once told him.

There were other signs of trouble. Neighbors in Mobile said Izquierdo and his girlfriend had a tempestuous relationship.

Yolanda King lived next door to the two and said Izquierdo was a kind man who helped neighbors and loved children. Still, she would often hear the couple fighting. Once, one of them heaved a couch out their second-story window, said another neighbor, Rita Higginbotham.

Colon, who sometimes saw the two together at dances for the Spanish community, also heard about the incident, as well as other complaints.

"He'd hit her, but she's throwing things at him too," Colon said. "Then they would be back together."

About nine months ago, Izquierdo moved in with a new girlfriend in Tampa, Adriana Ordonez.

"What was he thinking?" Ms. Ordonez asked aloud Friday. "I just thank God that he stopped where he was because who knows what he would have done if he came home."

The man she knew and loved was "very quiet, very good," said Ms. Ordonez, who works at the Hampton Inn.

But her son, Alex Ordonez, 16, was unsettled by some of his behavior.

Izquierdo had mounted chalices on brackets above the front and back doors and believed spirits inhabited them.

Whenever Izquierdo would pass beneath them, he would speak to them with fervor, and in tongues. Often a disturbed look would cross his face, Alex said, as though he had been told something terrible.

Then he would disappear into a small hut-like building he constructed in the back yard as a shrine, something commonly used in the Santeria religion as a place to connect with spirits of the dead and ask for protection. Inside, Izquierdo kept candles, bowls of money and meat, an incense pot, cigars and a doll.

The sessions seemed to calm him after those episodes, said Adriana Ordonez, 33. When he emerged, he wouldn't talk of what had transpired or what the saints had said.

That was part of his solitary world -- a place neither Alex nor his mother tried to understand.

"It was for him and for him only," said Adriana Ordonez, who is Catholic.

"He's the only one who knew what the saints were all about," said Alex.

But Izquierdo was well-known among the Cuban community of Santeria practitioners in Tampa. He had selected a local "godfather" to act as his spiritual teacher and frequently went to a store on W Columbus Avenue that sells Santeria paraphernalia for candles and necklaces.

His behavior at home did not sound bizarre, said acquaintances at the store Cafeteria Y Botanica.

"He wasn't crazy," said store owner Jorge Perez, a baba lao, or top priest of Santeria. When Izquierdo returned from Cuba about a month ago, he had been initiated as a novice priest, or santero.

While in his native land, Izquierdo declared his guide was the patron saint of Cuba, a feminine deity who bestows good luck on rafters.

Izquierdo wore white to mark his intention to become a baba lao. But initiation fees to ordain Santeria priests are high. In the U.S., it can can cost as much as $20,000, followers of the religion said.

In Cuba the cost is much, much less, and that's likely why Izquierdo, who worked for the housekeeping department at the Radisson, did it there, Perez said.

Perez offered a possible religious interpretation of the shooting.

"When you crown your saint, if you don't do it right, the spirit of the dead can go inside you," Perez said. "It can happen five years afterwards."

But some of those who intersected with Izquierdo outside his religion said he wasn't an average guy.

Sylvia Freeman, who worked at the Radisson with her stepfather George Jones, one of the men killed Thursday, said Izquierdo had trouble completing even the simplest tasks of his menial job. His responsibility was to bring housekeepers supplies they needed to make up rooms.

"He's not getting it -- something an 8-year-old could do," Freeman said. "At lunch, he'd sit in the same spot every day. You'd try to talk to him, but he was distant, like he was in his own world."

- Times staff writer Steve Huettel contributed to this report.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.