A gunman who lured firefighters to his home with an emergency call then held four of them hostage for hours planned the kidnapping for weeks, targeting them so he wouldn’t be shot, authorities said Thursday.
Lauren Brown, 55, was heavily armed with a half-dozen guns in his house, police said. The financially strapped man whose power, cable and other utilities had been cut off because of nonpayment demanded they be restored but made no attempt to negotiate as he held hostages in his suburban Atlanta home Wednesday.
Brown called 911 and said he was suffering from chest pains, and five Gwinnett County firefighters arrived at 3:48, believing it was a routine call, said police Chief Charles Walters. Brown was lying in bed and appeared to be suffering from a condition that left him unable to move. But when they approached the bed to help him, he pulled out a handgun, Walters said.
He let one go to move the vehicles from the front of his house but kept the other four.
That began a 3½ -hour standoff. About 7:30, police were convinced that even if they met Brown’s demands, he had no intention of releasing his hostages, Walters said.
Brown had requested items from a fast food seafood restaurant for himself and his hostages, and a SWAT officer carrying the food approached the house in Suwanee, about 35 miles northeast of Atlanta.
Other SWAT members set off a stun blast to distract Brown and stormed the house. Brown opened fire on the first officer as he entered the bedroom. The man was hit in the left arm by one of the shots, but managed to return fire, killing Brown. Before Brown fired, police told him to drop his weapon, Walters said.
Exposed wooden beams could be seen through a gaping hole in the side of the house Thursday and debris littered the yard. Public records indicate the red brick house with white siding is in foreclosure and has been bank-owned since mid-November.
Brown suffered a series of personal setbacks over the years. He had separated from his wife by the time he filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002, according to federal court records. Then a consultant for IBM, Brown reported owing more than $100,000 to Home Depot, banks and credit card companies. The records suggest that he was tapping into his retirement savings to make ends meet.
His financial situation remained rocky. Records show state and federal tax collectors filed a series of liens on Brown’s home in the years since.
After the hostage-taking was reported, dozens of police and rescue vehicles surrounded the home and a negotiator was keeping in touch with the gunman, police said. The situation remained tense until the blast rocked the neighborhood of mostly two-story homes and well-kept lawns. Residents unable to get into their neighborhood because of the police cordon flinched and recoiled when the enormous blast went off.
“The explosion you heard was used to distract the suspect, to get into the house and take care of business,” Gwinnett County Police Cpl. Edwin Ritter said in a news conference minutes after the ordeal ended. He said the situation had gotten to the point where authorities believed the lives of the hostages were in “immediate danger.”
“It’s an unfortunate circumstance we did not want to end this way,” Ritter said. “But with the decisions this guy was making, this was his demise.”
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