. (AP) — A man holding hostages inside a building in California that houses a bank and a school district office has been shot and killed by the FBI, police said Wednesday.
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All the hostages are free and none was harmed, the Bakersfield Police Department said in a statement.
The suspect was killed in “an officer-involved shooting involving Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel,” the department said. The standoff in downtown Bakersfield ended about 12 hours after police were called to the building, police said.
The standoff began Tuesday afternoon 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. Bakersfield Police said the man barricaded himself inside with several people. Two hostages were released Tuesday after negotiations with authorities.
A spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase said the bank branch is on the ground floor.
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.
Officers established a perimeter around the area and warned the public to stay away. The police department’s crisis negotiation team had been in contact with the suspect by telephone.
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“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.
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