Police kill Louisiana bank gunman; 1 hostage dies
Louisiana law officers inspected a vehicle outside a Tensas State Bank branch during a hostage situation in St. Joseph, La. on Tuesday.
Louisiana State Police Superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson, left, told reporters of the release of a female hostage as FBI Special Agent in Charge of the New Orleans Division Michael Anderson, right, listened during a nighttime news conference in St. Joseph, La.
ST. JOSEPH, La. » A man who took hostages at a bank in rural Louisiana shot the two remaining hostages, killing one of them, before being shot and killed by police, authorities said.
During negotiations with law enforcement late Tuesday, the suspect — identified as 20-year-old Fuaed Abdo Ahmed — said he was going to kill the hostages, Louisiana State Police superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson said. State police then entered the building just before midnight Tuesday.
That’s when Ahmed shot the two hostages and then state police shot and killed him, Edmonson said. Edmonson said the hostages were shot in the upper body. He did not have any other information on the condition of the second hostage who was shot.
The hostages were both shot with a handgun, but Edmonson said Ahmed was also armed with a rifle.
The gunman initially took two women and a man captive around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Tensas State Bank branch in St. Joseph. He later released one of the female hostages.
Edmonson said authorities were able to put Ahmed on the phone with a friend in Alaska during negotiations and that was key in getting him to release the hostage. But Edmonson also said the man grew increasingly erratic as negotiations went on, sometimes hanging up on police.
Edmonson said Ahmed was a paranoid schizophrenic who believed a device had been implanted in his brain and said the standoff was not a bank robbery attempt but a planned attack. Ahmed had written a letter "detailing exactly what he was going to do," Edmonson said.
"He was mad at people that he said were mean to him," he said. "He had voices in his head."
But Edmonson said there was no indication Ahmed had any history with the bank employees and authorities did not know why he picked the bank. The bank sits across the street from a service station owned by Ahmed’s family.
"These were good, God-fearing people," he said of the hostages.
The suspect also had a duffel bag containing items he was going to torture the hostages with, Edmonson said.
"His intent was to inflict pain and kill these individuals," he said.
Edmonson said Ahmed’s parents were from Yemen, but he was a U.S. citizen and there was no indication that he had a political or religious motive.
