Florida man kills two students and wounds three others

By Calvin Palmer

A 60-year-old man killed two Chilean students and wounded three others, firing through a window at their house in a Florida beach town.

The Walton County Sheriff’s Office was still trying to determine the motive for Dannie Baker shooting the victims at Miramar Beach in northern Florida early Thursday.

“There were no indicators, no complaints of bad noise or something” said Tammy Godwin, executive assistant to the sheriff.

The students killed were killed as Nicolas Corp, 23, and Racine Balbontin, 22. The wounded were Sebastian Arizaga, 27; Francisco Cofre, 25; and David Bilbao, 21.

Bilbao was released from the hospital, but the other two were still undergoing treatment yesterday.

Godwin said the attack occurred at around 2:00 a.m. Thursday. She said Baker, who is in custody, did not enter the students’ house but shot at them through a window with a rifle.

Bilbao told his brother he and the other students  were sitting around a kitchen table talking and cooking when they were surprised by a blast and the sound of breaking glass.

“My brother thought something had exploded in the oven, and never imagined it was a gunshot until about the third shot when he was hit in the arm,” Mario Bilbao told a Chilean radio station.

“My brother threw himself on the floor and later tried to help one of his friends, but regrettably, he told me, it was too late. It’s going to be very difficult for him to get over this,” he said.

[Based on a report by AFP news agency.]