Suspect in Calgary junior high school hostage-taking taken into custody
Posted March 4, 2010 6:28 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
CALGARY – Police say a former student who was holding a secretary at knifepoint at a Calgary school has been taken into custody and his hostage is unharmed.
Insp. Frank Reuser said a 25-year-old man was demanding to speak with the principal at A.E. Cross junior high school. He let the secretary _ a woman in her late 40s _ go in exchange for a bottle of water.
“Apparently he suffered an injury some years back and he’s blaming the principal for this injury and now he wants to talk to the principal,” Reuser said Thursday.
He added the injury was sports-related and happened in 2000.
The students, who were in an assembly at the time, were removed from the school and were all safe. The assembly actually made getting the children out much easier, he said.
A 13-year-old student was trapped in a separate room while police negotiated with the man. Reuser said the teen was kept inside because he couldn’t leave without passing by the office where the secretary was being held. The trapped student was in touch by phone with both the police and his parents.
Jessica Smith, who lives across the street from the school, said she saw dozens of police officers swoop into the building at around 2 p.m. local time.
The officers were armed with large guns and what looked like battering rams.
Shortly afterward, Smith said, students began streaming out. They were loaded on buses and taken to another school.
There was an armoured police vehicle on scene as well as dozens of marked and unmarked police cars. Roads around the school were shut down.
An A.E. Cross website says the school has 575 students in Grades 7, 8 and 9.
