MIAMI – The sun had not yet risen on Tuesday when a group of FBI agents assigned to investigate criminals who attack children online approached the Water Terrace apartments in Sunrise, Florida, to execute a search warrant, a routine part of the job. which is always full of risks.
What exactly happened in the next few minutes is unknown, but a firefight began, dragging the neighbors out of bed in the quiet residential community. The police called the emergency dispatchers. Several shots fired, they reported. Send air rescue.
Two FBI agents died and three more were injured in one of the deadliest shootings in FBI history. No agent had been shot and killed on the job since 2008. A similar bloody shootout occurred in a Miami suburb 35 years ago, killing two FBI agents and wounding five others.
The man investigated in the case, which authorities said involved violent crimes against children, barricaded himself inside the compound and was found dead. A law enforcement official said it looked like the man killed himself before agents could arrest him. His identity was not released until his family could be notified of his death.
Video footage from local police stations showed a terrible scene in the open-air apartment complex. A SWAT truck crashed into the railing of the stairs that was in tatters on the floor. There were bloodstains on the floor outside the apartments. The police invaded the complex, closing the roads and keeping people away for most of the day.
Christopher A. Wray, the director of the FBI, identified the two agents who were killed as special agents Daniel Alfin and Laura Schwartzenberger.
“Every day, special FBI agents are putting themselves in danger to keep the American people safe,” Wray said in a statement. “Special Agent Alfin and Special Agent Schwartzenberger exemplify heroism today in defense of their country. The FBI will always honor your final sacrifice and will be forever grateful for your bravery. “
Ms. Schwartzenberger, 43, was the mother of two children in Colorado and has worked for the FBI since 2005. She was part of the violent child crime squad at the agency’s field office in Miami, court records show. She was assigned to the National Innocent Images Initiative, part of the FBI’s cybercrime program designed to combat the proliferation of child sexual abuse images online.
Alfin, 36, was the father of one from New York and was a special agent since 2009. He was assigned to the Miami Child Exploration task force. He discussed his role in an online FBI article about the 2015 arrest of a man from Naples, Florida, who ran what the bureau described as the largest child pornography site in the world. The site, called Playpen, had more than 150,000 users worldwide.
“They put their lives at risk and that is a hell of a price to pay,” President Biden said of the agents in comments in the Oval Office. “My heart hurts for families.”
Dawn Garrick, a resident of the apartment complex where the shootings took place, said she was woken from her sleep shortly after 6 am by police sirens and vehicle lights shining from her bedroom window on the ground floor. From her room, Mrs. Garrick, 53, watched the concerned neighbors leave to see what was going on, only to be directed back inside by the police. About an hour later, she said, she saw paramedics carrying someone on a stretcher in an ambulance.
The community is usually safe and quiet, she said.
“There are a lot of professionals working,” she said. “Everyone is friendly.”
Two of the injured agents, each shot several times, according to the FBI, were transported to a hospital. The third did not require hospitalization.
FBI squads that investigate crimes against children are considered some of the most difficult assignments due to the disturbing and graphic nature of the cases they handle. Agents often analyze horrendous depictions of children being sexually exploited, images that are then shared with others online.
Investigations into child sexual abuse often begin with a tip from online social media companies like Facebook, which reported having found nearly 60 million images and videos in 2019 alone. About half of the content was not necessarily illegal, according to the company, and was reported to assist law enforcement in investigations.
Still, companies can generally detect only a small percentage of what is distributed, since they rely on automated systems that can only flag material that has been previously flagged by users. Based on just one or two images or videos, investigators often find thousands, or more, on a suspect’s hard drive.
Sharing these images can also point to abuse in the real world. It is not uncommon to find offenders who share images of child sexual abuse and who also abused children in real life.
Alfin was involved in an investigation on a dark web forum in early 2014, where members uploaded and exchanged graphic images of child sexual abuse. The investigation resulted in the arrest of at least 350 people in the United States and hundreds more around the world. The rescue of more than 300 children is credited, according to an FBI press release
Over the past decade, criminals have increasingly used advanced technologies like the dark web – where users’ Internet protocol addresses are hidden – to stay ahead of the police. In one case, an Ohio man helped run a dark site with nearly 30,000 members from 2012 to 2014. The site, now closed, required users to share images of abuse to maintain a good reputation, according to court documents.
The online forum had a private section that was only available to members who shared images of children they had abused themselves with.
Several police investigations in recent years have broken down other huge dark web forums, including one known as Child’s Play, which reported having more than one million user accounts.
No details were released about the Florida investigation that led to Tuesday’s shooting. Hours after the shooting, there was still a strong police presence around the apartment complex.
George L. Piro, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s field office in Miami, said the agents “meticulously plan” and execute search warrants almost daily.
“The vast majority of these warrants occur without incident,” he said. “This morning’s operations in Sunrise ended tragically, with the guy opening fire on members of the search team.”
Throughout the day, the police maintained a perimeter about half a mile to the north, restricting access to the complex and its surroundings. Law enforcement officers cordoned off a large Nob Hill Road strip and set up a test site at a nearby rehabilitation hospital.
Officers killed on Tuesday were the first to be shot dead on duty since November 2008, when Special Agent Samuel S. Hicks, 33, was killed while serving a search warrant, according to the FBI
Hicks was part of a team of agents executing an arrest warrant at a house near Pittsburgh that was linked to a drug trafficking ring, the agency said.
Tuesday’s shooting was one of the worst in FBI history
In 1986, two agents were killed in Miami and five others were injured during the pursuit of two violent bank robbers who were also killed in the exchange. The shooting at Suniland Shopping Plaza, where today is the village of Pinecrest, was the most expensive in FBI history.
In November 1994, two officers were killed, a third officer was wounded and a 15-year-old boy was shot in the leg when a man entered the sheltered case squad room at Washington police headquarters and opened fire with an assault rifle. . according to the FBI
A police detective was also killed during the shooting. The sniper, suspected of a triple murder the previous month, left notes saying he planned to kill members of the local police homicide unit, the FBI said.
On Tuesday, policemen stopped in a dark line saluting when a stretcher carrying one of the bodies wrapped in an American flag was loaded into a rescue truck at Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale. A procession of dark police SUVs and motorcycles with sirens and lights escorted the ambulance to the county coroner’s office.
Patricia Mazzei and Johnny Diaz reported from Miami, Adam Goldman Washington, and Christina Morales from Coral Springs, Florida, Weston, Florida and Miramar, Florida. Katie Benner and Seamus Hughes contributed reporting from Washington, Maria cramer from Maplewood, NJ, Dance Gabriel JX, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Michael H. Keller from New York and Michael Majchrowicz from Sunrise, Florida, and Pembroke Pines, Florida. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.