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Mar 29, 2008 9:47 pm US/Eastern
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Charges Filed In Walt Whitman Bridge Standoff
PHILADELPHIA (AP) ―
Charges have been filed against the man and woman whose
SUV stopped in the middle of the Walt
Whitman Bridge
at rush hour, tying up traffic for more than three hours.
Johnny L. Reed and Monica Hayman were
undergoing psychological evaluations Friday at a Camden hospital.
State Police Sgt. Stephen Jones said Reed, 35,
of Winslow Township, was being held on $70,000 bail, charged with criminal restraint,
aggravated assault and terroristic threats for threatening to blow up the
bridge on Thursday.
Hayman, 31, of the same address, was charged
with obstruction, resisting arrest, conspiracy to commit criminal restraint and
conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, Jones said. Her bail was $65,000 with
a 10 percent option.
The child, Johnny Reed V, age 1, was taken to Cooper University Medical Center
in Camden to be
examined as a precaution. He was to be turned over to the New Jersey Department
of Youth and Family Services, authorities said.
No one was injured in the three-hour standoff,
which began around 4:20 p.m. Thursday when Reed got out of the SUV on the bridge
with a baseball bat in one hand and 1-year-old Johnny in the other.
Television footage of the standoff showed a
white Cadillac Escalade with its rear hazard lights flashing at a standstill in
the westbound lanes of the bridge.
Both lanes of the bridge were closed during
rush hour, and long lines of cars backed up in both directions. Officials began
allowing cars to make U-turns to get off the bridge.
Shortly before the standoff ended at about 7:30
p.m., an armored police vehicle pulled up bumper-to-bumper facing the SUV with
SWAT officers positioned behind it.
The man and the woman, carrying the child in
her arms, exited the SUV and walked a few feet behind it, along the barrier
dividing the westbound and eastbound lanes of traffic.
After a short time, both the man and the woman
lay down on the ground, and SWAT team members moved in.
Delaware River Port Authority spokesman Ed
Kasuba said police negotiators managed "to peacefully convince the driver of
the SUV to just give it up."
A toy gun and the bat were recovered from the
SUV, state police Sgt. Stephen Jones.
Col. Rick Fuentes, superintendent of the New
Jersey State Police said the incident started when state police tried to stop
the vehicle on Route 42 for a speeding violation. He said police followed the
vehicle for about eight miles, but broke off the pursuit near the bridge
because the motorist's driving became erratic.
State police alerted other law enforcement
agencies to the speeding SUV.
Within minutes, Delaware River Port Authority
police notified state police that the SUV was stopped in the westbound lanes of
the bridge, which carries Interstate 76 over the Delaware
River between south Philadelphia
and Gloucester City, N.J.
Chief Vincent Borelli, chief public safety
officer for the DRPA police, said the man got out with the child and began
swinging the bat at passing vehicles. Two vehicles were slightly damaged, he said.
The man also brandished a "realistic-looking
plastic handgun" before getting back into the vehicle with the child, Borelli
said. At that point, crisis negotiators
were called in.
New Jersey State Police Detective Sgt. Chris
Leone, one of three negotiators involved, said that Reed repeatedly claimed he
was being persecuted by the federal government and local police. "He thought he
was being tracked by unknown vehicles continuously," Leone said.
At one point during the negotiations, Reed said
he wanted to speak to Michelle Obama to air his grievances, Leone said.
He said Reed agreed to surrender after
demanding that police promise in writing that they would not harm him, the
woman or their son.
State police said Reed had visited the Bellmawr
barracks on Easter Sunday to lodge what Fuentes characterized as "nondescript personal
complaints" about incidents in his hometown. Troopers there referred him back
to his local police department and he left without incident.
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)