Ocala man arrested after shooting woman and fleeing University of Florida campus

An Ocala man awaiting trial in another criminal case faces attempted murder charges after he shot a close friend in the stomach near bars and restaurants across the street from the University of Florida early Sunday and fled toward two dorm buildings on campus, according to police.

The incident, which occurred at about 3:30 a.m., set off alarms across UF's campus in the middle of the night. Tens of thousands of students and professors received alerts via text, email and app. The alerts said at least two possibly armed suspects fled the shooting.

Police asked everyone to avoid the Murphree and Thomas Hall dorms. Police said everything was clear just 12 minutes later. A university spokeswoman, Cynthia Roldan, said one of the three men arrested on campus was caught near the Student Recreation and Fitness Center, further inside campus and east of the Gators football stadium.

Roldan said two other suspects were arrested off campus, but their identities were not immediately clear.

Neither the victim, a 19-year-old woman from Ocala, nor the suspected shooter were students at the university. She was hospitalized and underwent surgery, police said. She did not immediately respond to text messages or calls later Sunday. Her mother could not be immediately reached because the numbers listed for her were no longer in use.

There were questions about why the suspected gunman, Fabian Marcel Rivera, 24, was not in jail before the shooting: He was arrested in April after being charged with speeding while fleeing authorities, then in July for what police described as a flight after a fight, and again in August after a judge found he had failed to appear in court. Rivera was again released on bail after his arrest on Aug. 28 – less than four weeks before Sunday's shooting.

Rivera remained in jail early Monday, facing charges of attempted murder and resisting arrest. He could not be reached for comment because the sheriff's office prohibits inmates from interviewing the media without written permission from a defense attorney and a senior jail official. He has not yet hired or been assigned an attorney.

Police said the shooting was captured on video. Surveillance footage showed Rivera sitting in the passenger seat of a car, talking to the woman standing outside the driver's door. Police said Rivera took a gun from the car's center console, leaned in front of the driver and shot the woman in the abdomen around 3:30 a.m.

According to police, Rivera stared at the woman for 30 seconds after the shot, then got out of the car, threw a soda can into a nearby bush and ran away from the scene.

The driver – who told police he was a friend of the woman – was on his phone during the shooting, according to the police report. After hearing the gunshot, he told police he looked at Rivera and helped the woman. Another man, who said he was also her boyfriend, rushed over when he heard a gunshot and applied pressure to stop her bleeding, he told officers.

After police arrested Rivera, he told officers the shooting was an accident, but they didn't believe him. He said he tried to secure the gun in the console after seeing it was accessible and realizing everyone had been drinking. He “could not answer why the (victim) was shot if he was trying to secure the gun,” Officer Kristen Hall wrote, adding, “None of (Rivera's) statements matched what was seen on the video surveillance.”

Rivera told police the woman who was shot was “like a little sister” to him. The woman lives less than a mile from Rivera's home in Ocala.