11 Held Hostage in Classroom by Armed Student : Shots Fired in Kentucky Incident but No One Is Hurt; Youth Surrenders

An armed teen-ager stalked into a high school classroom and took 11 classmates hostage Monday, police and witnesses said. After a daylong standoff, he released them all and surrendered.

No one was injured in the confrontation, which lasted about 8 1/2 hours, police said. The youth fired two shots, one at the ceiling of the classroom and another at a window, state police said.

Upon entering the classroom, the teen-ager ordered the teacher and the first two rows of students to leave. The youth, who asked police to contact his father, told his hostages that he did not want to hurt anyone. The youth gave up an hour and a half after releasing his last two hostages.

The hostage-taker was identified by police as Dustin Pierce, a 17-year-old Jackson County High School senior, who was described as a good student.

Police said they were unsure what charges would be lodged against Pierce. He was taken to a juvenile holding center in the Clay County Jail in nearby Manchester. McKee is a town of 250 people about 50 miles southeast of Lexington in the Appalachian foothills.

“He was unbalanced,” said state police Detective Bob Stephens, who negotiated with Pierce throughout the day. “He was a confused young man. He was a young man looking for somebody to help him.”

Throughout the negotiations, Stephens said he feared that Pierce would try to kill himself since he seemed to be carrying out the scenario of the Stephen King thriller “Rage,” which he had been reading.

During a search of Pierce’s room at home, police found a paperback copy of the book, in which the lead character is shot by police. The book’s plot deals with a youth who holds a classroom of students hostage.

Police also found papers Pierce had written that made references to dying at 9 o’clock.

Pierce’s father, who was not identified, was on his way to McKee from Delray Beach, Fla., when the student released his last two hostages and surrendered.

Pierce released his hostages throughout the day in exchange for items such as food, soft drinks and cigarettes.

Police Trooper Ed Robinson said the hostage-taker was armed with a shotgun, a .357-caliber magnum revolver and “some type of automatic pistol.”