Priscilla Perez, just 17-years-old, was the youngest of the six victims killed in a weekend shooting rampage at a Hialeah apartment complex. NBC 6’s Gilma Avalos spoke with the teenager’s father, grandmother and cousin about her death.
Family members of a teenage girl that was killed in a Hialeah shooting rampage were left in shock following the harrowing news.
Priscilla Perez, 17, was shot and killed Friday night at her apartment complex at 1485 West 46th Street during an 8-hour standoff between police and a shooter who killed five others before being shot and killed by officials.
Officials say shooter Pedro Vargas, 42, kicked in the door of the apartment Priscilla Perez lived in with her mother Merly Niebles, 51, and stepfather Patricio Simono, 64. Both Niebles and Simono died in the shooting.
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Priscilla Perez, the youngest of the six victims, was an incoming senior at American Christian School with aspirations of becoming a pediatrician like her father, who lives in the Dominican Republic.
"It's disastrous," said father Julian Perez-Tejada. "It's impacting me tremendously, I can't describe it."
He said his eldest daughter was a happy, creative and intelligent girl. He first heard about her death Saturday morning while reading the newspaper, and he is still in disbelief.
His mother Gladys Perez said her granddaughter was a good girl who always went to church and school.
"She had just started to live," Gladys Perez said in Spanish.
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Gladys Perez said if her granddaughter was more of a party girl, this might not have happened because she wouldn't have been home on a Friday night.
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Cousin Jovanny Perez, also 17, said he was trying to make sense of the killing.
"It's like a hole in the heart," he said. "Everything's a bit darker."
Jovanny and Gladys Perez said they were grateful police were able to step in and save the other hostages to spare other families the pain of losing a loved one.
American Christian School principal Sergio Chavarri said Priscilla Perez was a student at his school. He said she never missed one day of class in the four years that she attended the school which takes pre-K through high school students.
"She was a very nice person," Chavarri said. "We can't believe that such a nice person should be, you know, something like that."
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