Incredible footage has been released of the moment a sheriff’s sniper killed a suspect by shooting directly through a computer monitor.
Sterling Ramon Alavache was holding two Bank of America workers in Florida at knifepoint while claiming to have a bomb.
Officers had already tried to get the would-be bank robber to surrender but instead Alavache decided instead to take two hostages.
The 36-year-old then put one of them in a headlock and held a knife to her throat – and that’s when a SWAT team’s sheriff’s sniper decided to end the siege.
With remarkable precision, the bullet was fired straight through a computer monitor and into Alavache’s head, killing him instantly.
The woman he tried to use as a shield, one other hostage and everyone else at the scene in the bank, just outside Fort Myers, escaped without injury.
The robbery attempt, hostage situation and sniper fire brought a bustling suburban area lined with chain restaurants, hotels, an outdoor mall and office buildings to a terrifying halt as the Lee County Sheriff´s Office responded with tools including a robotic dog, drones, a battering ram and a SWAT team.
The Lee County Sheriff’s Office didn’t say where the sniper shot from, but SWAT members had surrounded the bank to deal with the hostage situation.
Video on the sheriff’s office Facebook page showed several deputies standing with their rifles raised, near an entrance to the bank alongside a negotiator who spoke with Alavache seconds before a shot rings out.
Other video from outside the bank shows a deputy being raised in a platform with an armored front loader.
‘When he presented deadly force like that, our SWAT sniper shot and killed the suspect. We were in fear for her life and her safety,’ Sheriff Carmine Marceno said during a news conference.
‘Quickly we were face to face with a male suspect who was armed with a knife,’ Marceno said.
‘He also claimed he had a bomb. He had two hostages at this point, and we tried to negotiate with him continuously.’
‘Then the man inside the bank grabbed the woman and put the knife to her throat.
‘When he presented deadly force like that, our SWAT sniper shot and killed the suspect,’ Marceno said. ‘We were in fear for her life and her safety.’
Law enforcement officers stormed the scene shortly after the call came in about a bank robbery south of Fort Myers.
Deputies rushed into the multistory building that houses the bank, securing it as dozens of terrified people ran outside, said Marceno, who described it as ‘a chaotic scene.’
A large number of law enforcement swarmed the hostage situation at the Bank of America building at Bell Tower Shops in Fort Myers, Florida
Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno addresses the media after a hostage situation at the Bank of America next to the Bell Tower Shops in Fort Myers, Florida earlier this year
‘I didn’t even know the county had this,’ local radio host Charlie Lopez – who observed the scene told Fox 4 News.
He watched the sniper shooting from his car and provided details to his Facebook followers.
‘You see, in the video, it almost looks like they lift up the sniper in the air,’ he said. ‘Then they have a battering ram. I’ve never experienced seeing all of Lee County´s arsenal. They had drones, they had cameras.’
Alavache, the suspect who was killed, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and manic depression, also referred to as bipolar disorder, according to his GoFundMe.
The father-of-three also battled drug and alcohol addiction which only got worse following the death of his wife in 2018.
In 2022, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a disease causing progressive shutdown of the body through damage to the central nervous system and it was then he entered a downward spiral of drugs and depression once again.
‘His struggle to remain clean became an induction of his mental struggles,’ the family wrote.
‘Though loved ones must now grieve Sterling’s absence, they find solace in the fact that he is at peace, and these struggles are no more.’