3 Wounded in Standoff Over Hostage in Carlsbad

Police shot and wounded a man who stabbed a police negotiator and a hostage he held for 90 minutes Thursday afternoon in a restaurant.

The suspect, tentatively identified as Marin Flores Corral of Mexico, was shot twice in the chest after he burst from the kitchen of the California Cafe restaurant in Plaza Camino Real’s The Broadway department store and stabbed hostage negotiator Ramon Trujillo, 37, three times, according to police and hospital officials. The man also stabbed in the neck the restaurant manager, William Scott Neal, 27.

The suspect was flown by Life Flight to UC San Diego Medical Center Thursday night; no word was available on his condition. Trujillo, a detective with 14 years on the Carlsbad police force, was in stable condition at Scripps Memorial Hospital. Neal was taken to Tri-City Hospital where he was reported in stable condition.

The shooting ended a 90-minute standoff between the police hostage-negotiating team and the suspect, who took his lone hostage in the kitchen of the second-floor restaurant about 4:30 p.m., police spokesman Matt Matney said.

About 6 p.m., the suspect attempted to break through a kitchen door with the hostage, but the hostage escaped and ran past police, Matney said.

The knife-wielding man then burst through the same kitchen door and stabbed Trujillo--who was one of three hostage negotiators--in the shoulder, left thigh and left knee before police opened fire on him, Matney and a Scripps hospital spokeswoman said.

Police offered no explanation of what caused the incident late Thursday night.

Matney said that The Broadway store remained open during the 90 minutes while hostage negotiators attempted to coax the man out of the kitchen. The store also stayed open after the shooting.

“It’s probable that most of the people in The Broadway did not even know what was going on,” Matney said. “It was a very quiet situation in a remote part of the store.”

The manager of the ATC Factory deli directly across from the Broadway on the upper level of the mall, Chris Zimmon, said he was aware of the incident about 4 p.m.

“It was right out of the movies. When I got here I saw two plain-clothes policemen running into The Broadway.”