Fuaed Abdo Ahmed was angry and hearing voices, authorities said, when he wrote a letter detailing his plan to take employees hostage at a rural Louisiana bank.
The former high school football star with 2,700 rushing yards and 40 touchdowns his senior year made a list of people he believed had caused him problems and included his ex-girlfriend’s family, saying they had ruined his relationship and were responsible for putting a device inside his head, according to the letter found in a van parked near the bank.
The 12-hour standoff began around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday when authorities said Ahmed, armed with a .380 semiautomatic handgun and an assault rifle, took two women and a man captive at Tensas State Bank branch in St. Joseph, a town of fewer than 1,200 people near Louisiana’s border with Mississippi.
During negotiations, authorities were able to get Ahmed on the phone with a friend in Alaska, which was crucial in convincing him to release a female hostage. He talked to authorities on a hostage’s cell phone, then switched to one of the bank’s phones, but grew increasingly erratic as negotiations went on, sometimes hanging up on police. One of his demands to authorities was that they get the device out of his head.
Eventually, Ahmed told negotiators he was going to kill the two remaining hostages, and state police stormed the building just before midnight Tuesday. That’s when the 20-year-old shot the remaining two hostages and police shot and killed him. One hostage, identified as Jay Warbington, died of gunshot wounds, while the other remained hospitalized in critical condition, said Tensas Parish Sheriff Rickey Jones.
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