WYTHEVILLE, Va. — An 8-hour-long standoff at a smalltown Virginia post office ended peacefully with three hostages being released and a suspect who came out of the building in a wheelchair in custody, police said late Wednesday.
Warren Taylor of Sullivan County, Tenn., is being questioned and authorities do not yet have a motive, state police Sgt. Michael Conroy said. The hostages and suspect left the building in Wytheville after authorities ordered the man to surrender.
The standoff began about 2:30 p.m. when shots were fired at the one-story brick post office in the mountain town in western Virginia. No one was injured, and relatives of two of the hostages said they were able to talk to their families by phone.
It ended about 8 1 /2 hours later without the dozens of Special Weapons and Tactics team members armed with automatic weapons having to fire a shot.
Police in the town in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains told the Wytheville Enterprise the suspect had what appeared to be a common plastic explosive strapped to his chest. Conroy said police had found weapons and that shots were fired, but no explosives had been uncovered.
He said they were still searching the building late Wednesday, as well as Taylor’s truck.
The suspect made no demands other than to ask for a pizza, said Pete Rendina, spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
An FBI negotiator had asked the several dozen SWAT members, police officers, firefighters and others surrounding the building to be quiet because authorities were talking with the suspect.
An officer in the early evening delivered food and drink to the front door at the request of the suspect, state police said. Earlier reports said the man holding the hostages was in a wheelchair, but state police said he entered the building pushing one.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael Felberbaum and Steve Szkotak of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 12/24/2009