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| Two federal law officers speak to local EMS technicians along La. Highway 128 outside a Tensas State Bank branch during a hostage situation in St. Joseph, La., Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2013. A man whose family owns a store across the street from the bank took three bank employees hostage, and a state police negotiator has been talking to him for hours, police said. |
ST. JOSEPH, La.
(AP) -- A man whose family owns a store across the street from a bank
branch in rural Louisiana took three bank employees hostage Tuesday,
and authorities talking with all four have no reason to believe any
captive has been hurt, police said.
The man - a
U.S. citizen and local resident - has been calm and has made some
demands, Louisiana State Police superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson said
Tuesday evening. He would not describe the demands or further identify
the gunman.
"We're still working with him to determine exactly what his intent is," Edmonson said.
The bank's employees are two women tellers and a man, said Mayor Edward Brown.
The
gunman, carrying at least a handgun, took them captive about 12:30 p.m.
at the Tensas State Bank branch in St. Joseph, and the negotiator
talked with him throughout the afternoon, said state police spokesman
Trooper Albert Paxton.
The red brick bank is
just off Louisiana Highway 128, a rural stretch of road cutting through
cornfields, and across the street from Trak convenience store, which the
gunman's family owns, in St. Joseph, the seat of Tensas Parish.
Edmonson warned that the standoff could last for some time.
"Our utmost concern right now more than anything else is the safety of those hostages," he said.
More
law enforcement people and equipment will be brought in. "This is a
fluid situation. We've got to be prepared to act," Edmonson said.
Brown
said that, as a general rule, the town's most notable crimes are the
occasional drug busts, and some residents are so frightened about what's
happening that they've left town.
"It's a quiet town. Very little crime. So this is amazing," Brown said.
The town of 1,200 is near the Mississippi River, downriver from Vicksburg, Miss., in northeast Louisiana.
Paxton said he didn't know whether the three hostages were bank employees or if any customers were inside.
He
said he believed that the Trak convenience store was evacuated, but
there were few other occupied buildings within the perimeter that state
police and the FBI set up.
Richardo
(rik-AHR-doh) Miles, a 25-year-old farmworker, said he lives about a
half-mile from the bank. He sat on his bicycle at a roadblock near an
abandoned hardware store about a quarter-mile away, watching dozens of
first responders, including paramedics and heavily armed men in
camouflage.
A helicopter circled overhead in
the overcast sky for a time as men, some carrying assault rifles,
gathered in the street in front of the bank. Law enforcement trucks also
hauled in construction lights, apparently to prepare in case the
standoff lasted into the night.
The sight of the state police bomb squad and SWAT team unnerved many people in the sleepy farm town, Miles said.
"It's
kind of startling for the residents. We're not accustomed to this kind
of activity," said Miles. "Some people are pretty scared. They're
nervous."
Tensas Parish lies along the river,
but St. Joseph is about a mile from the riverbank and about two miles
from a 3,000-acre oxbow lake that long ago was one of the river's bends.
Nearly one-third of the parish's 5,000 residents live under the federal
poverty level, according to U.S. Census figures. Farmland makes up more
than 45 percent of the 600-square-mile parish, with most of it in
cotton, feed grains, soybeans and wheat.
