Seven people are dead after a violent series of shootings that stretched from Fort Lauderdale to Sarasota, leaving families shattered across two Florida counties and investigators piecing together a trail of gunfire. Six victims were killed in their homes and driveways, and the suspected gunman is believed to have died from a self-inflicted wound, turning a cross-state crime spree into a murder-suicide. The scale and speed of the violence have transformed a deeply personal tragedy into a case that has rattled communities on both coasts of the state.
What began as a domestic dispute inside a Fort Lauderdale house ended with a mass shooting at a Sarasota home, a frantic manhunt, and finally the suspected shooter’s body found in a car. As loved ones plan funerals, detectives are retracing every step of the suspect’s movements, trying to understand how a conflict inside one family escalated into one of the deadliest linked shootings Florida has seen in years.
From Fort Lauderdale to Sarasota: How the Shooting Spree Unfolded
Investigators say the violence started in a quiet Fort Lauderdale neighborhood, where multiple relatives were shot inside a home before the killer got back in a car and headed across the state. Reports describe the initial killings in Fort Lauderdale occurring earlier in the day, with the shooter then driving roughly 200 miles to Sarasota, where the rampage continued at another residence tied to the same extended family. By the time officers connected the two addresses, six victims had been shot dead and the suspected gunman would soon be found with a fatal wound in Sarasota, bringing the total to seven dead in what authorities describe as a suspected murder-suicide that spanned Sarasota and Fort.
Law enforcement in Florida quickly realized they were not dealing with two isolated crime scenes but a single unfolding spree. Detectives publicly linked the Fort Lauderdale house and the Sarasota home after matching the suspect and vehicle across both locations, describing how two crime scenes with 7 dead were connected on opposite sides of the state. Officials said the Sarasota killings involved apparent execution-style shootings, and the suspect was later discovered with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Sarasota, a detail that aligns with early accounts of Seven Dead in state violence.
The Victims: Intertwined Families Torn Apart
The dead are not strangers to each other; they are members of closely connected families whose lives overlapped through marriage, friendship, and shared history. Relatives have publicly honored the Stolyar, Blyudoy, Azizov, and Ioffe families, describing how several generations were wiped out in a matter of hours. A fundraising page created to support funeral costs lists the surnames together, a stark reminder that the killings did not just hit one branch of a family tree but cut across multiple lines at once, and supporters have rallied around the honoring the Stolyar families campaign…