Around 11AM today an estranged father locked himself & his two children inside an apartment on 1401 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. The children’s mother, filled with anxiety collapsed outside the hostage negotiator vehicle around 1:10PM about 3 hours into the standoff. Then at about 3PM the police standoff ended & the mans three year old daughter as well as his 11-year-old son were safely reunited with their mother while the man was taken to the hospital.
Hit the jump to find out more.
Amanda Mullen
A deranged father took his two young children hostage and barricaded himself inside a Bed-Stuy apartment for over four hours.
The standoff began at about 11 a.m. when the unidentified man locked himself inside an apartment at 1401 Atlantic Avenue along with his three-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son, cops said. The man refused police requests to open the door but did not appear to have a weapon, cops said.
The impasse ended just after 3 p.m. when police overpowered the father and led the kids out the front door.
“He gave up inside the room. We had to go in and subdue him,†said a police source at the scene. “Kids are fine, father is fine. He’s going to the hospital to get checked out and he’ll be arrested there.â€
The childrens’ mother became hysterical in the third hour of the standoff and was loaded into an ambulance after she collapsed at about 1:10 p.m.
“She was nuts, man. That’s her kids, to hold them hostage, that’s a crazy thing to do,†said Donovan Mays, 47, who owns a nearby auto shop and spoke to the mother shortly after she heard her children were in danger.
About 25 police, including officers from the Emergency Service Unit, crowded the street, and cops even placed an inflatable landing pad in front of the three-story building.
The 58-year-old owner of the ground-level store underneath the crime scene said he believes the childrens’ mother and father are married, but that he hadn’t seen the father in over three months.
A woman who identified herself as the mother’s best friend said the father had been intimidating and threatening toward the mother.
“He’s not crazy. He’s been harassing her for a long time,†she said. “She had a court order of protection but he didn’t care.â€