Standoff Ends as Police Kill Suspect, Free Children

A police SWAT team stormed a Florida home before dawn Friday, freeing two young children unharmed and killing the suspected murderer who had held them hostage since Tuesday.

Clutching teddy bears, 4-year-old Malcolm Phillips and 2-year-old Teddi Priest were carried out of the house before dawn in the arms of SWAT team members. The cousins were reunited with their weeping mothers, who held and rocked them in the street.

Even police negotiators and SWAT team members cried tears of joy.

Police raided the home near downtown Orlando after hostage-taker John Edward Armstrong, 39, fell asleep with the two children.

“The decision was made to enter the room after visual confirmation where all the parties were,” Orlando Police Chief William Kennedy told reporters. “Shots were fired and John Armstrong was killed.” He had several bullet wounds to the heart.

Det. Scott Perkins, who threw himself on Armstrong to protect the toddlers and was shot in the hand, was treated at the Orlando Regional Medical Center and later released.

“Perkins dove on the suspect to protect the children. He was the shield for the children,” SWAT team leader Capt. Frank Fink told reporters. “I call him a hero. No doubt about it.”

The gunfight ended what had become the longest hostage standoff in central Florida’s history, a 68-hour ordeal.

“As long as we knew the children were safe, we were willing to give him time, we were willing to work with him,” said Sal Lomonico, the police department’s chief hostage negotiator.

Armstrong had been suspected of killing a man and wounding a woman in nearby Winter Park on Tuesday and led police on a car chase that ended near the duplex where the children live.

He barged into the home at random, chased the youngsters’ mothers out at gunpoint and took the children hostage. At one point, he demanded a car and threatened to kill the youngsters if he didn’t get it.

During the three days he held the children, Armstrong lived a life of strange domesticity, playing, watching cartoons and making peanut butter sandwiches while snipers, armored assault vehicles and ambulance crews waited outside.

Through their high-tech surveillance gear, police heard Teddi laughing at cartoons and Malcolm telling Armstrong where to find things. When the children cried for their mothers, Armstrong called them by pet names and cheered them up.

Armstrong had ignored pleas from the children’s mothers and his own family to release the two toddlers.

Police negotiators had waited patiently as Armstrong tired, and finally, a button-size listening device officers had dropped through a broken window picked up a sound they hadn’t heard all week: snoring. That was when they moved in.

Police said Armstrong was a career criminal repeatedly released early from prison.

Armstrong’s family strongly criticized the police action and said he would not have harmed the children.

“He could have ended this peacefully at any time,” said police Sgt. Bill Mulloy. “He didn’t have to die, and he didn’t have to cause the grief and heartache he caused to these children and their mothers.”