Update: All hostages have been released and the gunman has surrendered after a botched bank robbery turned into a tense standoff Thursday in Jacksonville, Florida.
SWAT team members were on the scene, authorities said, after the gunman took 11 hostages before finally surrendering.
An initial 911 call reporting a bank robbery came in at 9:06 a.m. A short time later, another call indicated that someone may have been shot, but the sheriff’s office has been unable to confirm that, Bujeda said.
Police negotiators also were present, the spokeswoman added.
Streets surrounding the bank were blocked by police, and Bujeda urged patience from business people unable to get to work.
“Situations like these sometimes can be short and sometimes can be long,” she said.
Bujeda urged local TV reporters not to show their positions around the bank because that could pose “a danger to officers as well as the individuals in the bank.”
The bank is located in a northwest Jacksonville commercial district surrounded by a storage facility and a dollar store.
I live in Florida. I worked in Jacksonville for years. It is a hot spot for crime, drugs and gangs. They don’t like to admit it but folks who live there know it. Not only Jacksonville but now neighboring communities that once were elegant and filled with top notch neighborhoods going down the tubes with very nasty tempered homeless on the streets etc.
They built a beautiful place called the Landing years ago. Featured in a big magazine. With stylish stores and with great restaurants, had to close much of it rapes in the parking garages, attacks on people everywhere, now just a skeleton of it’s once greatness. NO night life in Jacksonville. They keep trying to make it work while doing nothing to clean out the city of the problems.
Daily people killed they are right up there with Chicago and other cities. Happy to see this turned out OK. You can’t build a City on a dung heap without clearing out the dung.