[EXCERPT, THE ARSONIST’S LAST WORDS]

PLAZA JANITOR FIRED FIVE DAYS BEFORE ATTACK
Suspect lost custody of daughter in Friday hearing

By Juni Bruder, Herald Staff Writer/Tuesday, April 14, 1998

ORLANDO—The suspect in the arson attack on the Parramore Plaza was fired from his job five days before the fire, according to the man who employed Mauro Abissi as a janitor. Jaysukh Chaudhary, owner of The Clean Team, said that a complaint about Abissi was filed on Thursday. Chaudhary would not comment on the nature of the complaint.

“He was a good worker,” said Chaudhary, whose company supplied fifteen janitorial employees to the Plaza on contract. His records were seized by the FBI on Monday.

Little is known about the suspect, whose family remains in seclusion. On April 10, Abissi attended a hearing at the Orange County Courthouse in which his wife, Rosanna Roberts Abissi, filed for sole custody of the couple’s 2-year-old daughter. The motion was granted.

The couple had been involved in divorce proceedings since January, when Abissi, 29, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of domestic battery. Police were called to the Abissi household on the night of Dec. 26, 1997, at which time an emergency restraining order was issued.

According to military officials, Abissi was a Desert Storm veteran who suffered health problems related to his service in the Persian Gulf in 1991. Abissi was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division.

April 13 marks the seventh anniversary of his unit’s return from Kuwait to the airfield at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. This week also marks the third anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.


Copyright © 2012 by Alison R. Lockwood. All rights reserved.