Houston SWAT team members worked with Jersey Village PD officers Friday morning to release hostages from a hotel room in the northwestern area of the city.
Jersey Village police told reporters early Friday morning that they believed a man and woman were being held against their will. Later, they said the man was released around 7:30 a.m.
The situation started as an apparent armed robbery at a Polar Express convenience store around 2:15 a.m. The suspect, captured in surveillance video, barricaded himself in a nearby Quality Suites at 17550 Northwest Freeway/Highway 290, KHOU reported.
Jersey Village officers made their way to the hotel and showed a picture of the suspect to the clerk, who confirmed the man was in the hotel.
Officers said they tracked the man to a room on the third floor. The man reportedly fired a single gunshot and told police to get away from the door or he would shoot the hostages.
He then broke the window to the hotel room and looked outside. Officers on the street fired at the room; KHOU reported that it was unclear whether the man had been hit.
No injuries were reported, but the intense situation caused significant disruption at the hotel.
Jersey Village police officers told reporters they cleared as many rooms as possible but were unsure whether everyone got out of the hotel during the standoff.
“They banged on the door; they said, ‘Ma’am, we have a situation. You and your family need to get out.’ So that’s exactly what we did. We got out,” Randee Oyieko, a hotel guest, said. “We looked, and there was guns everywhere, and we were like, ‘Come on, let’s go.'”
Hostage negotiators on the scene assisted with the situation. An update published after the standoff ended explained that Houston police took the suspect into custody after he released the woman just before 11 a.m. Friday.
The suspect’s name has not been released.