Hostage taker dies in bank shootout
Print Edition
A SWAT team stormed a rural Louisiana bank early yesterday, killing a gunman after he shot two hostages, one of whom later died.
In a dramatic end to a 12-hour standoff, State Police spokesman Albert Paxton said officers entered the bank in the small town of St Joseph shortly after midnight because the gunman was threatening to kill one or both of his hostages.
The man, 20-year-old Fuaed Abdo Ahmed, shot both hostages when police entered the building. Police then shot and killed him, Paxton said.
“He was angry and he wanted to kill hostages,” Paxton said of the gunman, who initially took three bank employees hostage but released one woman after several hours.
The two wounded hostages were rushed to local hospitals but one of them later died, said State Police Sergeant Eric Cuenca. The other was in critical condition.
Ahmed was suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and had complained of hearing voices, police said.
The gunman’s family owned a convenience store in the town.
Ahmed was the California-born son of Yemeni parents. Police said there was no indication of any link to recent threats of attacks on the United States originating from Yemen.
“We don’t have any reason to believe there was any connection,” Paxton said.
The US earlier this month temporarily shut about 20 of its embassies and consulates in the Middle East and Africa, including its embassy in Yemen, and US nationals were told to leave that country after US officials said they had information about unspecified terrorist threats.
The Louisiana standoff took place at the Tensas State Bank in St Joseph, a town of less than 1,200 people.
Police said they found a book on hostage negotiations at Ahmed’s apartment.
“This was not a bank robbery,” State Police Colonel Mike Edmonson told reporters in a video posted on the website of the Monroe, Louisiana News Star newspaper. “He actually had a book for negotiations... and knew exactly how the negotiations would take place, the questions he would be asked.”
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