Prisoner Drugged Gunman to End Standoff

A woman who feared her daughter’s ex-boyfriend would kill her during this week’s armed standoff near Baltimore ended the ordeal by lacing his iced tea with the prescription sedative Xanax, police said Wednesday.

Lynn Whitehead, 40, who was held hostage for five days with her boyfriend, Andy McCord, and his 12-year-old son, Bradley, waited nearly an hour for 31-year-old gunman Joseph Palczynski to fall asleep on their living room sofa Tuesday night.

Then Whitehead and McCord climbed out a bedroom window, leaving the boy asleep on the kitchen floor to be saved by SWAT team members who crashed through the living room window and shot Palczynski dead.

Whitehead put two ground-up Xanax tablets in the tea, Baltimore County Police Chief Terrence Sheridan said. The drug is a sedative, often prescribed for people who suffer from anxiety.

Palczynski, a convicted felon with a long history of mental illness and domestic abuse, killed four people in shooting rampages that began March 8 over the breakup of his relationship with Whitehead’s 22-year-old daughter, Tracy.

He eluded police for nearly two weeks until late Friday, when he shot his way into his ex-girlfriend’s family home in Dundalk, Md.

Jim McGee, one of the negotiators, said the negotiating team wanted to keep Palczynski alive but was most concerned about rescuing the boy. He also defended the couple’s decision to leave the boy behind when they fled.

“They were being tortured, relentlessly tortured, for days on end,” McGee said. “The negotiators, including myself on the phone, could hear them begging for their lives in the background.”

Frustrated with a police refusal to let him speak to his ex-girlfriend, Palczynski told the mother he was going to kill her.

“He put us on an emotional roller coaster. We would think that he was ready to give in, but then he would say, ‘I’m going to die here or I’ll escape,’ ” McCord said.