F.B.I. personnel killed a man early Wednesday morning who was suspected of holding 10 people hostage and who was armed with explosives, in an office building in downtown Bakersfield, Calif., ending an overnight standoff, the police said.<\/p>\n
The shooting happened at around 4:20 a.m. on Wednesday, the Bakersfield police said, more than 15 hours after reports of a standoff that involved reports of a bomb threat in a school district office on the second floor of a building that houses a Chase Bank branch.<\/p>\n
The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene, the police said. The authorities said that all of the hostages, who were employees of the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, were unharmed and had received medical evaluations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat unfolded was undoubtedly a terribly frightening and unsettling experience, and the composure our employees demonstrated throughout the 16-hour ordeal was extraordinary,\u201d John Mendiburu, the Kern County schools superintendent, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The Police Department said on Tuesday that it received a call reporting a bomb threat around 1 p.m. on Tuesday. The police arrived at the scene to find that a man had barricaded himself with several people inside a second-floor office.<\/p>\n
The suspect told officers that he had explosives attached to himself, Assistant Chief Jeremy Blakemore of the Bakersfield Police Department said at a news conference. \u201cHe also told law enforcement that additional explosives had been attached to some of the hostages, which we confirmed based on our own observations,\u201d Chief Blakemore said.<\/p>\n
Officials did not give a motive, and Chief Blakemore said that it did not appear that the school district employees were \u201can intended target in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other workers and customers fled the four-story building, and the police evacuated the surrounding area, Chief Blakemore said.<\/p>\n
The F.B.I. identified the suspect as Anthony Scott Searles-Harris, 41. Sid Patel, the special agent in charge of the agency\u2019s Sacramento field office, said that Mr. Searles-Harris had \u201ca criminal history of using weapons to commit violent offenses\u201d and was a registered sex offender. The suspect served in the U.S. Army in 2006 and 2007, Mr. Patel said, and he was dishonorably discharged after going absent without official leave.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was really concerned about his previous case history,\u201d Chief Blakemore said, of the suspect\u2019s social media posts. \u201cHe had some concerns related to how his previous case had been handled and what the aftermath of that was, the sentencing and those types of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chief Blakemore said that Mr. Searles-Harris tied up five of the hostages. Officials did not release any other details about the people that were held.<\/p>\n
Mr. Patel said that Mr. Searles-Harris asked early in the negotiation with the police for the F.B.I. negotiators to become involved. He said that he believed the building was a target because there is a bank branch on the first floor, which would have brought a more robust response. <\/p>\n
Two people were released<\/a> after negotiators communicated with the suspect by phone, the police said. The first was released around 4 p.m. Tuesday, and the second around 8:30 p.m.<\/p>\n During that time, a female hostage was secretly calling the police until her phone battery died, according to Mr. Patel. She is diabetic, and lacked medication, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cAt one point we were able to get medicine to her,\u201d Mr. Patel said. \u201cWe knew that this is a loss-of-life situation for that particular hostage that was taken, if we didn\u2019t act sooner than later.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNegotiations did stall, and the suspect refused to release any more victims,\u201d Chief Blakemore said, explaining its department\u2019s request for assistance from the F.B.I., which took control of the response at about 9 p.m.<\/p>\n The incident prompted a huge response of more than over 100 F.B.I. personnel, SWAT teams from Los Angeles and Sacramento, bomb experts, and an elite hostage rescue team from Quantico, Va., home to the primary training academy and major operational divisions of the F.B.I.<\/p>\n The agency is continuing to test the devices that Mr. Searles-Harris had, Mr. Patel said. \u201cWe were able to conclude at this point in time that they were not a concern to us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Bakersfield, a city of about 425,000 residents about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles, is the seat of Kern County.<\/p>\n The episode unfolded as votes were being cast in California\u2019s primary elections<\/a>. State Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains<\/a>, a Democratic candidate for Congress, canceled<\/a> an election night watch party that had been scheduled for Tuesday in downtown Bakersfield.<\/p>\n Mark Walker contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"F.B.I. personnel killed a man early Wednesday morning who was suspected of holding 10 people hostage and who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[141819,7,9,8,236,131846],"class_list":["post-345521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-bakersfield-calif","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-police","tag-threats-and-threatening-messages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}