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Hostage drama plays out at Tinseltown

By LEE WILLIAMS
lwilliams@TheCitizenNews.com

A gunman accused of holding up two managers at Tinseltown during a robbery gone bad was pulled by his leg from a hole in the ceiling by arriving law officers and was in custody by the early morning hours of Tuesday.

But his accomplice, believed to be hiding in the un-air-conditioned ceiling area of the 17-screen theater, remained at large hours later Tuesday afternoon despite an exhaustive search that included police dogs, helicopters and at least 100 law enforcement officers from Fayette, Fulton, Henry and Clayton counties.

Two theater employees, briefly tied to their office chairs, were released unharmed within minutes after police arrived. No shots were fired and no one has been reported hurt in the incident, police said.

One of the hostages was identified as theater general manager Dair Bradley. The other unidentified hostage was an assistant manager. A third person, also an assistant manager, was not taken hostage.

Police identified the captured suspect as Aundrea Lee, 28, Powder Springs, Ga. Officers said Lee was armed with a handgun when captured.

Officers were being rotated in and out of the hot building into two cooled school buses parked at the rear of the theater just for that purpose.

By mid-afternoon Tuesday, officers turned the theater cooling system back on, explaining that the inside heat made it difficult for the armored officers to work.

Five portable toilets were trucked in for use by the small army of officers late Tuesday afternoon as the siege went past 15 hours.

About 30 officers were inside the theater at any one time, officials said.

They turned the air conditioning back on to allow better use of their special body-heat-sensing equipment in a high-tech effort to locate the suspect.

The first-ever hostage incident at the massive Pavilion shopping center unfolded after one of the employees at Tinseltown tripped the panic alarm and alerted authorities early Tuesday morning.

Fayetteville police responded and discovered they had a hostage situation on their hands.

“Approximately, 1 o’clock this morning we received an alarm at Tinseltown,” Fayetteville police spokesman Detective Steve Crawshaw said. “Officers responded to the area. They made contact with a manager inside of Tinseltown Movie Theater. While they were checking on the other two managers who were inside the building, they found the managers tied up in one of the offices.”

The suspects, first identified only as two black males, authorities learned, were not far away.

“As soon as they made contact with the managers they said there were two subjects with a gun that had just climbed into the ceiling,” Crawshaw said. “One of the officers was able to grab a hold of one of the subjects’ foot and he fell out of the ceiling and we were able to apprehend him.”

A handgun also was found when they captured one of the men, he added.

“We do have one other subject still inside of the building,” Crawshaw said during a press conference at 11 a.m. Tuesday. “Approximately an hour ago that subject came to the back door, opened the back door of the building, and when he saw the law enforcement outside, he ran back inside. We sent a team in with a K-9 [trained police dog] and SWAT member, conducted a search of the building and as of this time we have not been able to locate him.”

A swarm of vehicles from the Fayetteville Police Department, Fayette County Sheriff’s Department, Fulton County Police Department, Clayton County Sheriff’s Department, Henry County police and city and county fire departments dotted the perimeter of the movie theater parking lot and law enforcement officers armed with shotguns stood at the ready.

Crawshaw indicated the officers were working hard to apprehend the suspect, but the mammoth size of the 17-screen facility, coupled with the temperature inside of the building being well into the 90s, hampered their effort.

Officers tinkered with the temperature to help flush out the robber who was believed to be hiding in the ceiling.

“It’s a very large structure,” Crawshaw said. “We’ve been trying to check the building the entire time. With everything in there and all the seating, it’s very difficult to do a thorough search of the building.”

Crawshaw added the contents of the building also added to the difficulty of the search.

“In the upstairs is where all the projection equipment is and actually the offices that were running the business so there’s a lot of equipment stacked all over, the cameras, the projectors, things like that, so there’s several areas where he could have jumped up on top of the equipment and climbed into the ceiling.”

The closed movie theater, barricades, a large police presence and two helicopters attracted the attention of several Fayette County residents, including Ronnie Boatwright.

He was surprised to learn that Tinseltown had been taken under siege.

“Things like this don’t happen in Fayette County,” Boatwright said.

The rest of the stores in the shopping center were open for business as usual, despite the massive law enforcement presence.

Many shoppers-turned-spectators watched the siege of the theater as it unfolded from the sunshine-drenched parking areas adjacent to the entertainment center.

As of deadline late Tuesday afternoon, the massive manhunt continued.

— Additional reporting by John Thompson and Beth Snipes.