"Strapped Bombs to Bodies"... Suspect Shot Dead After 15-Hour Hostage Standoff in California

10 Education Office Employees Held Hostage
Suspect Shot Dead, All Hostages Rescued
Suspect in His 40s Had Prior Sex Crime Conviction

FBI agents responding to a hostage situation. Photo by AP Yonhap News

A man in his 40s who took local education office staff hostage in California has been shot and killed.

According to a report by Yonhap News citing the Associated Press on June 4, police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that they shot and killed the suspect, Anthony Scott Sells-Harris, 41, after a 15-hour hostage standoff.

The suspect broke into a four-story commercial building in Bakersfield, about 160 kilometers northeast of Los Angeles, the previous afternoon and took 10 employees of the Kern County Office of Education hostage.

He tied up some of the hostages and threatened that he had attached explosives to both himself and the hostages, demanding documents related to a case he had been involved in previously.

The police and FBI fatally shot the suspect at around 4:20 a.m. that day, and all the hostages were safely rescued without injury. The explosives claimed by the suspect were found to pose no actual threat.

According to records from the prosecutor’s office and the court, the suspect was a registered sex offender who had been convicted of a sex crime involving a child under 14 in 2014. It was also confirmed that he was recently involved in legal disputes over a divorce, domestic violence, and child custody.

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