Police said the workers were wounded after confronting suspects in a tool theft, and two people were later detained after a chase ended in Lake Mary.
WINTER PARK, FL — Two window installation workers were shot Tuesday afternoon in a residential Winter Park neighborhood after confronting suspects accused of stealing tools from a job site, and police later took two people into custody after a chase that ended in Lake Mary.
The shooting happened just before 4 p.m. near Overlook Road and Sylvan Boulevard, south of State Road 426, according to Winter Park police and local news reports from the scene. The case quickly widened from a neighborhood shooting into a cross-county search when officers said they found a suspect vehicle and followed it north into Seminole County. By late Tuesday night, two suspects were in custody, two wounded workers had undergone surgery, and detectives were still sorting out exactly how the confrontation turned violent.
Police said the first emergency calls came in around 3:50 p.m. Officers responding to the neighborhood found two adult men with gunshot wounds and had them taken to a hospital. Investigators later said their preliminary findings showed the men were shot after confronting two suspects involved in the burglary and theft of tools. Javier Riano, identified in television interviews as the owner or manager connected to the installation crew, said the workers had been on the job at a home when a car pulled up and people began taking their equipment. When the workers tried to stop them, gunfire followed. Riano said one employee was shot once and another was hit three times. “The one guy that got shot three times, that’s the one that worries me,” he said in an interview from the scene, adding that both men have families and had been at work when the shooting happened.
Several details remained unsettled Tuesday night, and police had not yet publicly named the wounded workers or the people detained. Officers also had not released the suspects’ ages, hometowns or any charges. Early police statements said the extent of the victims’ injuries was not immediately known, but Riano later told local reporters that both men had come out of surgery and were expected to survive. That account offered the clearest sign by late evening that the shooting was not expected to become a homicide case. Even so, detectives were still describing the matter as an active criminal investigation, and authorities had not yet explained whether the suspects knew the workers, whether the theft was planned in advance, or whether any of the stolen tools were recovered. Witness Bryton Henderson, who was near the end of the chase in Lake Mary, told WESH that he saw officers taking two people into custody and noticed what looked like yard or work equipment sticking out of the vehicle’s window.
The scene stretched across two Central Florida communities. The shooting itself unfolded in a neighborhood of homes in Winter Park, a city that straddles Orange and Seminole counties and is better known for quiet residential blocks, schools and commercial corridors than daytime gun violence at job sites. The arrest phase ended miles away near the Lake Mary Village shopping area in the 3800 block of West Lake Mary Boulevard, where officers converged on a vehicle matching the one sought after the shooting. Fox 35 reported that the chase began after police located a suspect in the Winter Park area and that the pursuit continued until the vehicle stopped in Lake Mary. Television footage from the shopping center showed officers surrounding what appeared to be a gold-colored vehicle while investigators secured the area. For neighbors and shoppers, the day’s images were striking: first a work crew interrupted by theft and gunfire, then a police operation unfolding in broad daylight at a busy retail center.
What comes next will depend on evidence now being gathered by detectives. Police had not announced charges by late Tuesday, but the facts described publicly point to several possible lines of investigation, including burglary, grand theft, aggravated battery or attempted murder, depending on witness accounts, physical evidence and prosecutors’ review. Investigators will also be expected to examine how the suspects approached the site, whether any surveillance video captured the theft or shooting, whether shell casings or firearms were recovered, and what role each detained person may have played. Florida cases like this often move first through probable cause reviews, booking decisions and formal charging documents before a fuller account becomes public. Until then, the official record remains limited: two workers were shot, a suspect vehicle was located, a pursuit followed, and two people were detained. Police said more information would be released when the investigation is complete, but they did not announce a date for the next briefing.
The shooting also lands during a tense period for Winter Park police, who have already handled another major gun case this year. On Feb. 17, officers were called to the 600 block of Railroad Avenue after reports of gunfire and found an 18-year-old man, J’Vion Raishon Giorgio May-Taylor, with a gunshot wound. He later died, and the department said in a Feb. 24 update that a person involved had come forward while investigators continued seeking witnesses. That earlier case was separate from Tuesday’s shooting, but it added to a recent run of serious gun investigations in a city where such cases still draw outsized attention. Tuesday’s attack also touched a familiar concern for contractors and crews who work in neighborhoods with expensive tools visible in trucks and open work areas. In this case, according to the workers’ account, the theft did not end with property taken from a job site. It escalated within moments into a shooting that sent two laborers into emergency surgery and turned an ordinary afternoon of home-improvement work into a crime scene.
By Tuesday night, the strongest voices in the story were not from court records or charging documents, which had not yet been released, but from people who saw the human cost up close. Riano spoke in blunt terms about men who had simply shown up to work and were now in the hospital. Henderson described the confusion at the end of the chase as officers rushed in around the vehicle. Police, for their part, kept their public statements narrow and procedural, saying only that the victims were apparently shot after confronting suspects during a burglary and theft of tools. That left many of the unanswered questions for another day: who fired, how many shots were fired, whether the suspects were armed before arriving, and whether investigators believe the workers were targeted or were victims of an opportunistic theft. What was clear Tuesday was the sequence that residents could see for themselves — a burst of gunfire in a Winter Park neighborhood, ambulances carrying away two wounded workers, and a fast police response that ended with two detentions in Lake Mary.
The case remained open as of Wednesday, March 25, with two suspects in custody, two wounded workers expected to survive, and investigators still working toward formal charges and a fuller public account of what happened.
Author note: Last updated March 25, 2026.