ORLANDO, Fla. -- A man charged with killing a worker and wounding five others midday Friday at the Orlando engineering firm where he once worked has been denied bond.

A judge Saturday ordered 40-year-old Jason Rodriguez held without bail at the Orange County Jail in Orlando. He is charged with first-degree murder and other crimes.

Employees at Reynolds, Smith and Hills recognized their former co-worker when he drew a handgun from under his shirt, police said, and shot his first victim dead in the reception area. He then walked into the office and unloaded several more rounds, wounding other employees at the company that fired him two years ago.

The man killed in the Friday shooting was identified by police as 26-year-old Otis Beckford. The five wounded people were in stable condition at Orlando hospitals and police say all are expected to survive.

Interstate 4 was closed in both directions through downtown and nearby schools were locked down until the alleged gunman was caught.

Rows of ambulances lined up outside the building as police snipers took up positions around the building and officers on foot and horseback searched the area.

Rodriguez was taken into custody several hours after the shooting Friday on the eighth floor of the Gateway Center, a high-rise office tower near Lake Ivanhoe in downtown Orlando office tower.

He surrendered peacefully, apologizing as officers handcuffed him, police said.

"I'm just going through a tough time right now. I'm sorry," officers quoted him as saying.

Police said Rodriguez told detectives he blamed the firm for recent trouble he had receiving unemployment benefits. As officers led him handcuffed into a police station, a reporter asked the divorced man why he had attacked his former colleagues.

"Because they left me to rot," said Rodriguez, who recently told a bankruptcy judge he was making less than $30,000 a year at a Subway sandwich shop and had debts of nearly $90,000.

Rodriguez told detectives that the company had fired him without cause and had made him look incompetent. He told them he was unemployed for a year and a half before getting a job at a Subway, where worked until six weeks ago.

RSH's chief financial officer Ken Jacobson told Channel 4 that Rodriguez was a beginning engineer who just didn't work out.

"He struggled with performance from the very beginning," Jacobson said. "We tried to work with him. He was not up to standards, so we let him go."

Charles Price, an attorney who represented Rodriguez in his bankruptcy case, said he could not comment on specifics of the matter. He had not seen Rodriguez since the summer.

The Orlando Sentinel reported on its Web site that Rodriguez was detained by the Orange County Sheriff's Office in June 2007 after it received a report that he was a "danger to self and others."

At a brief hearing Saturday morning, defense attorney Bob Wesley asked the judge that police and prosecutors have no contact with Rodriguez without his permission.

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