ATLANTA (AP) — A man with a gun held a 2-year-old boy hostage Wednesday in a standoff that’s lasted more than 13 hours, and a SWAT team sealed off the neighborhood in Atlanta’s northeast suburbs to deal with what police call a “barricaded gunman,” authorities said.
The SWAT team was responding to the subdivision in Buford, about 35 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta, Gwinnett County police Cpl. Deon Washington said in an email to The Associated Press. No injuries were reported Wednesday morning.
The suspect was holding the boy inside the home, Washington said. No one was being allowed into or out of the neighborhood, he added.
“Negotiations are underway and the situation is being treated as a hostage situation,” Gwinnett County police said in an emailed update late Wednesday morning.
The standoff began around 10 p.m. Tuesday when someone called police to report that a man was threatening to shoot everyone at the home and then take his own life, Washington told reporters at the scene.
A female and “several other people” were allowed to leave the home, but the toddler remained inside with the suspect, police said in the late-morning update.
“The residents that live in the subdivision have been urged to shelter in place and stay away from doors and windows,” police said.
Wednesday is the first day of a new semester in the county’s schools after the holidays but school buses were not allowed into the neighborhood, which was on lockdown, school system spokeswoman Sloan Roach said.
“Our schools are aware and will work with those families,” Roach said shortly before 8 a.m. “We obviously don’t have any idea when our buses will be allowed in.”
Roach said she didn’t know how many students were being affected by the lockdown, but they attend three schools in the area: Mill Creek High School; Jones Middle School; and Ivy Creek Elementary School.
The standoff comes one day after police in nearby DeKalb County said a man with a knife held 11 children and his girlfriend inside a motel room for five hours before stabbing himself in the neck Tuesday morning. Police said the suspect in that case was critically injured. No one else was hurt.
