Investigation continues into shootout at Fort Myers apartment complex

Fort Myers police are back at the apartment complex where a shootout broke out between the law enforcement agency and a 29-year-old man who died on Wednesday night.

Police said they were canvassing the area and trying to learn more about Ryan McFarland-Bauer’s motive and what led to the gunfight.

Bullet holes riddled the front door of his neighbor’s apartment but Fort Myers police said those bullet holes were not caused by them. They are investigating the possibility that McFarland-Bauer got into a verbal altercation with a neighbor in the moments before the gunshots rang out.

No one has been able to contact the neighbor whose front door was shot and their car is no longer in the parking lot.

Neighbors said they saw a white car screech away when the gunfire first rang out. WINK News has not confirmed if that white car belonged to the neighbor.

Police said they have not seen the car since the shooting happened.

Police were called to Vistas at Eastwood, the apartment complex off of Ortiz Avenue, at around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday night. The department said they were met with gunfire from McFarland-Bauer, who was filmed pacing his balcony.

“We never seen him outside on his balcony,” one neighbor said.

The neighbor said they believed there was a woman who lived in the apartment, but she had moved out recently.

Some neighbors knew something wasn’t right before the violence. On Wednesday morning, one neighbor said they heard banging all night coming from inside McFarland-Bauer’s apartment.

“Like someone was drilling into concrete. It was all night it was up until 7 a.m. And when I walked out for work to go to work. There was a police officer that was right out here,” a neighbor said.

One man who lived in an apartment two floors below McFarland-Bauer heard it too.

“He seemed to be building barricades,” the neighbor said.

It got so bad that he went to the leasing office.

“I went to the office to file a complaint 12 hours before this whole thing happened that they need to get into that apartment because something serious is going on. Jokingly said, you know when you get in there, you better bring the police with you,” the man said.

When the shots started flying, people started in the Vistas at Eastwood flooded 911.

FGCU Forensic Studies Professor David Thomas, a former police officer, knows that those officers were thinking.

“You know, you want everyone to survive the encounter. And then you have to be ready for something to go wrong,” Thomas said.

Fort Myers police, meanwhile, have not said whether its officers were responsible for McFarland-Bauer’s death or if he died by suicide.

“The suspect had the high ground and they have to approach. So they have to figure out a way,” Thomas said. “If SWAT is involved, SWAT has to try to create a position of a sniper on higher ground, if that’s possible, or put a sniper in a place in order to get a good shot.”