A desperate, heavily armed captor had a handgun trained on him and some of his brethren, but firefighter Timothy Hollingsworth’s voice was surprisingly calm.
“Engine 10 to radio: We are in a situation where we have an armed person,” Hollingsworth relayed to a Gwinnett County emergency dispatcher. “He is requesting certain, um, certain utilities to be turned back on at his house, and he is armed, and we are in the room with him.”
Hollingsworth’s demeanor and two decades of experience helped Gwinnett County police rescue him and four other captive firefighters — Sydney Gurner, Chip Echols, Joseph Moss and Jason Schoon — after 55-year-old Lauren Brown held them in his Suwanee home for almost four hours Wednesday. The standoff in the quiet subdivision ended with Brown being killed in a shootout with SWAT officers.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution identified the firefighters through court records obtained Friday. A person who answered the phone at Hollingsworth’s home said he didn’t want to comment right now. The other firefighters could not be reached. Gwinnett fire spokesman Capt. Thomas Rutledge said the department would probably make them available for interviews at a press conference next week.
Hollingsworth, 44, was by far the most experienced member of the crew. The other four responders averaged about five years with the department, Gwinnett County Fire Chief Bill Myers said at a press conference Thursday.
Hollingsworth also was a certified law enforcement officer who had received tactical training as a former Gwinnett County sheriff’s deputy. Sgt. Dale Simpson of the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Department said he trained alongside Hollingsworth in the mid-1990s for the Sheriff’s Special Emergency Response Team. The team was formed to respond to crises in the jail or courthouse, including those involving hostages.
Even so, Simpson was amazed at the coolness the veteran firefighter displayed on the recorded dispatch call.
“They were lucky it was someone that had his background, his training,” said Simpson. “He could kind of handle it and roll with it.”
Hollingsworth notified the dispatcher that Brown had “multiple handguns, multiple rifles.”
He then ticked off Brown’s demands as blandly as if he were reading a grocery list: for the home’s power to be turned back on within 55 minutes, for cable and Internet access to be restored by 5:30 p.m., and for his cellphone service to be reactivated.
At about 4:07 p.m., Brown released a firefighter — it’s unclear which one — to move the firetruck and ambulance away from the front of the home.
Gwinnett police spokesman Officer Jake Smith said “the first hostage that left, he was able to give us a pretty good floor plan” of what the home’s interior looked like in preparation for the rescue team’s entry.
Hollingsworth asked for updates from the dispatcher on the progress of restoring telephone service and seemed to be using the information to try to keep Brown calm. When 5 p.m. came and the phone still didn’t work, Hollingsworth radioed the dispatcher again.
“Just give me something to work with, Radio,” Hollingsworth said. “Either the bundle or the cellphone. I need something.”
The dispatcher advised that police were working on it and the service would be restored shortly.
But even after police fulfilled Brown’s initial requests, he still refused to negotiate. He made new demands for food and asked officers to bring tools to board up his windows and door. At that point, the SWAT team decided to force entry. Brown was killed in a subsequent shootout.
A SWAT officer, whose name police are withholding, was still recovering Friday from a gunshot wound to his forearm.
The firefighters were treated for minor injuries Thursday and released to their families, Rutledge said.
Gwinnett County Police Chief Charles Walters said the firefighters’ calm demeanor throughout the volatile situation was a “tremendous, tremendous help” to the police department.
“That made a very, very difficult situation a whole lot easier, without panic and without just taking things into their own hands,” Walters said. “These are guys that operate under pressure every day, but this was an anomaly. That calm allows us to have at least one thing that we don’t have to worry about.”
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