A man held 10 people hostage inside a California office building before the FBI shot and killed him early Wednesday, bringing the more than 15-hour standoff to an end, police said.
The hostages were found unharmed inside the downtown Bakersfield building that houses a bank and a school district office, the Bakersfield Police Department said in a statement.
Anthony Scott Searles-Harris, 41, was shot and killed around 4:20 a.m., according to Sid Patel,
of the FBI's Sacramento field office. Patel said the suspect has a history of violence and is a registered sex offender.
The standoff began around 1 p.m. Tuesday when officers responded to a call of a bomb threat at the Chase Bank building, a four-story office building with dark-tinted glass windows all around. Police said the man had barricaded himself inside with several people.
The department’s crisis negotiation team talked with the suspect by telephone and eventually two hostages were released Tuesday night, police said.
Nearby buildings, including City Hall and the police headquarters that are just a block away, were evacuated and some roads were temporarily closed during the hostage situation. Bakersfield, a city of about 380,000 residents, is the seat of largely rural Kern County and is about 100 miles (160 kms) northeast of Los Angeles.
A spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase said the bank branch is on the ground floor.
Officers established a perimeter around the area and warned the public to stay away.
“We have every single resource at our disposal out here to bring this to the safest resolution possible,” Bakersfield police Sgt. Eric Celedon said Tuesday.
Jacob Davidson, a livestreamer known as Dad’s Gone Live, was a block from the bank at his family’s tattoo shop when he started getting calls about the bomb threat.
“I went into the bank’s parking garage and watched the cops enter the back of the bank. This is the biggest police presence I’ve ever seen in this town,” Davidson said.
His livestream captured through a window in the building a woman rocking back and forth Tuesday night before crouching below the window. Later, two hands could be seen waving.
