Sandy MaloneLancaster, OH – Police fatally shot a knife-wielding man who was holding a woman hostage at knifepoint early on Saturday morning (video below).
The incident occurred at about 12:30 a.m. on Dec. 28 after an armed robber stormed Cristy’s Pizza on Pierce Avenue, the Scioto Valley Guardian reported.
Police said that 31-year-old Troy Kirk brought a knife into the pizza restaurant in what appeared to be an attempted robbery.
Four employees were able to escape from the restaurant, but Kirk took store manager Tiffany Pelfrey hostage with his knife, according to the Scioto Valley Guardian.
Police responded to the scene and surrounded the business.
SWAT officers arrived and police tried to negotiate with the hostage-taker, the Scioto Valley Guardian reported.
Bodycam video showed Kirk using Pelfrey as a human shield while he stood in the doorway talking to police.
“Officers attempted to negotiate and deescalate the situation, but the male subject refused to cooperate,” Lancaster Police Deputy Chief Dan Shupp told the Scioto Valley Guardian. “In order to protect the life of the hostage, the supervisor on the scene made the decision to authorize deadly force…”
Bodycam showed an officer talking to Kirk from a position between cars at the back of the restaurant.
“Don’t value my life over her life!” Kirk yelled at officers in the video. “I do not want to take someone’s life, but I swear to god I will!”
“Talk to me, man. We don’t want it to go down this way,” the officer told Kirk. “Tell me what you want and we’ll try to help you.”
“What can you do? You can shoot me if you want, I don’t give a f–k,” Kirk told the police.
The officer tried to calm Kirk but asking what police could do to help him but the suspect seemed bent on committing suicide-by-cop, the video showed.
“Shoot me or I’m going to kill her, I swear to God,” Kirk told police in the video.
“You can put a bullet in her head or I’m gonna slice her throat,” Kirk screamed at the officers, becoming more hysterical by the second.
The video showed the officer tried to talk the knife-wielding man down, and explained that police wanted to work with him and didn’t want to kill him.
But that information seemed to only further enrage Kirk, the video showed.
He briefly went back inside the restaurant and police used those few seconds to line themselves up to shoot the hostage-taker when he reappeared.
When the back door of the restaurant opened again and Kirk stuck his head out, he was holding a knife to the hostage’s throat, the video showed.
“Listen dude, you don’t want to hurt Tiffany, right?” the officer asked Kirk. “Let her go and step out and we can work this out, man.”
But Kirk continued to hold onto his hostage and threaten her with a knife, the video showed.
Suddenly, Kirk let loose with a terrifying outburst.
“I swear to God I’m going to do it. I swear to f–king God on the Holy Bible, I’m gonna do it. I swear to God…” he warned police.
“You gotta take it,” the officer coached another officer off camera who had his gun trained on the suspect. “You gotta take it.”
A split-second later, Kirk started screaming again and poked his head farther out from the door, providing the officers with an opportunity to neutralize him and rescue the hostage.
An officer fired one shot and Kirk fell to the ground, fatally wounded, the video showed.
Lancaster police said the hostage was not injured during her rescue, the Scioto Valley Guardian reported.
Kirk’s mother, Chari Kinkaid, told WSYX that her son was a diagnosed schizophrenic as a result of an earlier methamphetamine addiction.
“He’s been worried for days that the police were going to get him and shoot him, and I think he just snapped,” Kincaid said. “He wanted them to shoot him. He was sick and he was tired; he hadn’t slept for eight days because police were going to kill him, he thought.”
Watch the terrifying ordeal unfold in the video below: