Man Arrested After Killing Wife, Neighbor
A department store employee was arrested after killing his wife of four months and a neighbor and then holding two store managers hostage during a three-hour siege, police said.
Neither hostage was hurt.
Richard J. Griffin, 33, took the hostages Thursday before doors opened at Dillard’s in the Paradise Valley Mall, police said.
Early in the siege, Griffin called 911 and said he “may have harmed some people in Scottsdale,” said Sgt. Kevin Robinson, a police spokesman.
Police said they later found the bodies of Helen Marie Griffin, 24, and Thom Jeffrey Kennedy, 30. The bodies were found in Kennedy’s apartment in the complex where they lived, police said.
Griffin, armed with a pistol, went to Dillard’s management offices and took a man and woman hostage, Robinson said.
He soon freed the man, but held the woman while police evacuated the store, Robinson said.
Neither manager supervised Griffin, said Dillard’s spokesman Bob Baker.
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