A man was shot and killed by the FBI early Wednesday after holding 10 school employees hostage, including some who were tied up, and warning he had strapped explosives to himself and some of the hostages inside a Southern California office building, police said.
Authorities stormed the building in downtown Bakersfield and shot the suspect, ending a more than 15-hour standoff, police said.
The hostages — employees of the Kern County Superintendent of Schools — were found unharmed inside the building that also houses a bank, said Bakersfield Assistant Police Chief Jeremy Blakemore.
“Throughout the night their families questioned whether or not they would be seen again but we are very grateful for the outcome,” Blakemore said during a news conference Wednesday.
Anthony Scott Searles-Harris, 41, was shot and killed around 4:20 a.m., according to Sid Patel, special agent in charge in the FBI’s Sacramento office. Authorities said he was an Army veteran who was dishonorably discharged, had a history of trouble with law enforcement and was a registered sex offender.
Searles-Harris told police he had a bomb after barricading himself within the second floor of the building and taking the hostages, Blakemore said.
"He had concerns related to how his previous case had been handled and what the aftermath of that was, the sentencing and those kinds of things,” Blakemore said.
Authorities were testing the devices that Searles-Harris said were bombs, but Patel said they do not appear to be a concern.
FBI officials said Searles-Harris served about a year in the Army before being dishonorably discharged for going AWOL.
California Department of Justice and court records show Searles-Harris was on the state’s sex offender registry due to convictions in 2014 for sexual crimes related to a child under 14 years of age. Those records show he was released from prison in 2018.
While authorities declined to discuss a motive in the standoff, Blakemore said some of the demands Searles-Harris made involved asking for materials from his previous case.
Court records in Kern County, California, show Searles-Harris filed a petition to prevent domestic violence, and was involved in divorce proceedings that note a young child as well as a fight for guardianship in which he was listed as an objector.
The standoff began early 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, in the city of about 380,000 residents about 100 miles (160 kms) northeast of Los Angeles.
The police department’s crisis negotiation team talked with Searles-Harris by phone and he released two hostages Tuesday night.
Buildings nearby, including City Hall and the police headquarters that are just a block away, were evacuated and some roads were closed during the hostage situation. Officers established a perimeter around the area and warned the public to stay away.
Jacob Davidson, a livestreamer known as Dad’s Gone Live, was at his family’s tattoo shop a block from the bank building when he started receiving 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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Associated Press reporters Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho; Hallie Golden in Seattle; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; and Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia contributed.
