ORLANDO, Fla. – A hotel guest among many evacuated early Saturday at an Orlando Holiday Inn described the chaos when law enforcement swarmed the hotel in search of a suspect who shot two police officers.
Orlando police said 28-year-old Daton S. Viel was barricaded in a hotel room for hours before shooting at SWAT officers multiple times. He was shot and killed when officers returned fire, according to the police department.
Shelby Songy, who was vacationing from Texas with her family and staying at the hotel during the evacuation, told News 6′s Catherine Silver the situation was “just insane.”
“We heard a big explosion. I don’t know if it was maybe a smoke bomb, them trying to get into a room, but there was some form of explosion,” she said. “And then the second we ran down, there’s the National Guard, helicopters everywhere, the police, FBI.”
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Two SWAT vehicles were parked in front of this restaurant when we first got here. They left around 10:00am.
— Catherine Silver (@CatSilverTV) August 5, 2023
We spoke to a woman who was on vacation with her family & was staying at the Holiday Inn when they were woken up by alarms. She says she heard an explosion. pic.twitter.com/eWrkBzFBcy
Songy said she woke up to alarms going off and assumed there was a fire, but she later learned it was part of the investigation into the downtown Orlando shooting.
“I didn’t know really what was happening. And then when I saw people running and screaming down the hallway, I was like, ‘OK, this is this is bigger,’” she said. “... The second they started yelling, like the SWAT team was yelling at us, I knew it was something way bigger. The fact that they were even there.”
The Holiday Inn was among several places that law enforcement responded to following the shooting in search of Viel.
The two officers were investigating a vehicle around 11 p.m. Friday near Washington Street and Garland Avenue that was wanted in connection to a homicide in Miami when they were shot by Viel, who was standing outside of the car, according to Orlando police Chief Eric Smith.
The suspect carjacked another driver and fled the area, prompting a pursuit, police said. The carjacked vehicle was later found at an apartment complex in Apopka, while the suspect was found hours later at the Holiday Inn.
“Officers were right there, other officers were right there, a vehicle pursuit ensued. It went up to different areas and went up to Apopka and went to another couple of different areas that, you know, we were doing a lot of things in Apopka and basically through our investigation they came back to the hotel over on Caravan Court, the Holiday Inn, and that’s where we found him,” Smith said.
The carjacking victim’s vehicle was towed away from the apartment complex, Smith confirmed, though he cited an active investigation to say he could not describe at the time how the suspect got to the Holiday Inn when the carjacked vehicle was found in Apopka.
Several law enforcement agencies joined the manhunt, including the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, Orange County Sheriff’s Office, Seminole County Sheriff’s Office, Apopka police, Orlando police, Daytona Beach police and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Smith said the officers’ names will not be released, citing Marsy’s Law.
Dr. Michael Cheatham, Orlando Health chief surgical officer, updated the condition of the injured officers at this latest news conference, sharing they were both expected to make a full recovery after police said earlier Saturday that the officers were “fighting for their lives.”
“We had two officers brought to us about 11 o’clock last night. I can’t go into details, to protect their privacy, other than to tell you that both officers are with us. They’re with their families. We’ve been taking care of them during the night and we expect them to fully recover from their injuries that they sustained in the line of duty,” Cheatham said.
Reactions to the shooting poured in from law enforcement agencies to government officials, offering support to the Orlando Police Department and the two wounded officers.
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