Man shoots himself as 12-year-old girl hides under bed during armed standoff

A Southwest Miami-Dade man who barricaded himself inside a home with four others — including a 12-year-old girl who hid under a bed for several hours — shot and killed himself Monday.

But police aren’t certain if Alfredo Alvarez, 45, took his life at the beginning of the six-hour standoff, or when it ended.

“They never made contact with Mr. Alvarez,” said Miami-Dade Detective and spokesman Lee Cowart. “We don’t know that.”

Though police never made contact with Alvarez, they did communicate with the young girl, who somehow managed to contact them while hiding under a bed on the second floor of the home at 20904 SW 133rd Ave.

Several hours into the standoff, Miami-Dade Special Response Team members managed to extricate the girl through a second-floor window, even as Alvarez was in the home.

He was found dead with a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the home’s second floor at about noon. None of the people inside the home with Alvarez were injured. It was unclear early Monday afternoon if they were all family members and why Alvarez took his own life.

Miami-Dade police responded to the home at 5:40 a.m. after receiving a 911 call about a domestic disturbance. When the first officers arrived, they heard gunshots, Cowart said.

That may have been when Alvarez killed himself. Over the next few hours two adult females and a juvenile male managed to escape. Police set up a perimeter.

At some point, according to Cowart, the 12-year-old girl managed to contact police and tell them she was inside the home under a bed on the same floor as Alvarez. Soon after SWAT team members broke into the bedroom and extracted her unharmed.

This story was originally published January 22, 2018 at 11:19 AM with the headline "Man shoots himself as 12-year-old girl hides under bed during armed standoff."