Hijacked at a supermarket in Los Angeles

An assassin in Los Angeles was hiding for hours with hostages in a supermarket. According to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the first shots were fired in the afternoon in the south west coast metropolis after the police arrived with special forces.

In a family dispute, the young suspect shot his grandmother and a young woman in shots. He then dragged the injured acquaintance into a car and escaped with it.

The police are persecuted. In Hollywood, they should have tried to stop the vehicle – to no avail. The victim had pulled through the rear window of his car on the police, he was told.

In front of a supermarket in the American food chain Trader Joe's, the man then pounded a lamp post with his car and launched a shootout with his pursuers – a woman in the supermarket was fatally shot. The man then ran into the store, where he took several spectators hostage.

Various American media outlets, such as the Los Angeles Times, reported that during the supermarket's siege by security forces for several hours, people repeatedly escaped through the door or windows. Others barricaded themselves in the supermarket, while police, firefighters and nearly 20 ambulances were stationed outside the door.

One of the hostages was Don Kohles, 91 years old. He was entering the grocery store when he saw two police cars "rushing on him like a bat from hell". He saw the hostageman crash into the lamppost, jumped out of the car and was shot by agents while he was running at Trader Joe's.

"The bullets flew directly on my back," said Kohles. He was immediately thrown to the ground, the people around him had cried.

Real estate agent Christian Dunlop was near the supermarket when he saw four people running in. An employee withdrew the hands of an injured woman. "She seemed lifeless," said Dunlop.

Several supermarket employees had posted a window on the second floor and had fallen to the ground, while others had escaped from the building through a backdoor, including a police officer carrying a little child in his arms. "I know all the employees, I see them all the time," said Dunlop. "My heart was pounding, thinking of everything that could happen."

Police negotiators tried to convince the hostage to release the 40 to 50 people in the supermarket. In the end, according to the LAPD, the author himself asked to be handcuffed.

The offender's antecedents and exact motives were initially unclear. According to the police, he is 28 years old. He was wounded in the arm and immediately arrested. The suspect's grandmother was seriously injured and the girlfriend carried a grave. According to CNN, the dead should be a supermarket employee named Melyda Corado. According to her brother Albert Corado, she would have worked several years on "Trader Joe's".

According to the fire department, six people aged twelve to 81 years were transported to the hospital as a precautionary measure. None of them was shot and wounded.

During the hostage crisis, US President Donald Trump had spoken via Twitter and wrote that he was following the development in Los Angeles "very closely." Mayor-Mayor Eric Garcetti regretted the death of the woman in the supermarket. At present, it is still unclear whether the woman has been hit by hostage bullets or police. Garcetti thanked the police and firefighters for their efforts and the fruitful negotiations with the hostage taker, who had apparently worsened.

Chief of Police Michael Moore said the hostage taker had made a number of requests, but police negotiators had firmly believed in persuading him to give up.