Cartoonist draws gun on paperA camouflage-clad cartoonist carrying a fake machine gun entered the Miami Herald building demanding to see a top editor and then held police at bay for three hours yesterday before surrendering.
No one was hurt during the bizarre incident, which ended about 2:45 p.m. when police took suspect Jose Varela into custody. He was charged with three counts of aggravated assault.
Varela, a freelancer for the Herald's Spanish-language sister publication, El Nuevo Herald, was armed with what appeared to be an automatic machine gun, Police Chief John Timoney said. It was later determined to be a toy, although Varela was also armed with a 6-inch hunting knife, police said.
He apparently was angry with the newspaper in part for its position on Cuban emigres and was also upset because he had recently separated from his wife, acquaintances said.
But the purpose of the standoff frequently seemed convoluted. Varela entered El Nuevo Herald's sixth-floor office demanding to see Humberto Castello, the paper's executive editor, police said. Castello was not in the building and the suspect barricaded himself inside the editor's office.
At one point, Varela told a reporter for The Miami Herald he was "the new director of the newspaper."
Uh huh- you're the 'director' of the paper and *I* am Sheeba, Queen of the jungle...
"I'm here to unmask the true conflicts in the newspaper," Varela told The Herald. "They laugh at exiles here. There are problems with payment."
There were about 12 to 15 people in the newsroom. Most of them were evacuated but some remained to cover the story.
Barbara Gutierrez, who was editor of El Nuevo Herald from 1994 to 2000, told the Daily News that Varela was "a very talented guy and extremely well-connected" in Miami's Cuban and Latino communities. "He had a special wit, always with a joke," she said. "He was a nice, affable guy, who would always bring his wife and child in when he brought in his cartoons."
It was the second incident involving a gun at the building in the past year and a half. In July 2005, former city Commissioner Arthur Teele, who had been just been indicted on federal corruption charges, fatally shot himself in the Herald lobby.