After holding his 10 children, their mother and a teenage brother hostage for more than five hours Tuesday morning, a 36-year-old fugitive stabbed himself in the neck inside a DeKalb County hotel room, according to police.
The incident began shortly after 2 a.m. when officers responded to a report of a domestic assault at the Rite4Us Inn & Suites at 4300 Snapfinger Woods Drive, about 10 miles east of downtown Atlanta, DeKalb police Major S.R. Fore said.
It ended just after 7 a.m. when Korrie Quinton Thomas critically injured himself with a knife, Fore said.
But Thomas shouldn’t have been a free man when he held his family hostage, DeKalb District Attorney Robert James said Tuesday afternoon.
On Nov. 10, Thomas was sentenced to 15 years, including nine to serve in prison, following a guilty plea on aggravated assault and armed robbery charges, the DA said. Judge Clarence Seeliger gave Thomas a deadline of Nov. 16 to surrender, but Thomas never arrived at the jail, the DA said.
Thomas remained on the run until early Tuesday, when he refused to come out of a first-floor room or let anyone else out for more than five hours, according to police.
It wasn’t known what prompted the standoff, which created a disruption in the pre-dawn hours. The hotel was evacuated as SWAT officers negotiated with Thomas, and the standoff was visible from I-20 and Wesley Chapel Road, contributing to traffic backups in the area.
Shortly after 7 a.m., the door to the room opened, and when officers went in, they found Thomas injured, police said. He was taken to a hospital for treatment of the self-inflicted injuries, police said. No one else in the room was injured.
Thomas is the father of 10 of the children, Fore said Tuesday afternoon. The youngest child is 3 months old and the 17-year-old boy is Thomas’ younger brother, according to police.
No information was released on whether the family was living in the hotel. But some of the children had been seen playing outside the hotel in recent days, Channel 2 Action News reported.
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