Inset: Anthony Lehman (Waukesha County Jail). Background: A Meijer store in Waukesha, Wis., where authorities say a hostage situation took place (Google Maps).
A Wisconsin man has been jailed following an alleged hostage incident that led to a police standoff inside a Waukesha grocery store, authorities said.
Anthony Lehman, 21, is charged with one count of first-degree reckless injury, one count of false imprisonment, one count of making terrorist threats, and three counts of second-degree recklessly endangering safety, according to the Waukesha County District Attorney’s Office.
The case stems from a late-July confrontation at the Meijer store on Sunset Drive in Waukesha.
Lehman himself placed a 911 call just minutes before 6 p.m. on July 30, according to a criminal complaint obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Milwaukee-based Fox affiliate WITI.
On the call, Lehman allegedly told a dispatcher that he was holding a hostage in the men’s restroom of the superstore and demanded to speak with a hostage negotiator, the complaint says. Police said he could be heard telling the 59-year-old male hostage that he would “get seriously hurt” if he did not keep his feet flat on the floor. Moments later, prosecutors allege, Lehman instructed the man to look straight ahead and down.
Lehman later claimed he had a “dead man’s switch” — a device or mechanism designed to activate if the person holding it becomes incapacitated or loses control — and demanded access to “multiple hypnotists,” according to police.
As the 911 call continued, investigators say Lehman was heard making repeated threats toward the older man. He also allegedly warned responding officers that the situation would “go south real f—ing fast” if they entered the men’s restroom where the hostage was being held, according to the charging document.
At one point, a specialist took over the line and Lehman reiterated his demand for multiple hypnotists, police said. The specialist then asked the defendant about his past with hypnotists and medication. At one point, Lehman told the specialist to hold on, the complaint says.
Within roughly six minutes, officers arrived on the scene.
Eventually, Lehman produced a bottle of glue and ordered the hostage to glue his own hands to the floor, according to the charging document. The hostage refused, and was subsequently held at knifepoint, police said. Soon enough, however, the hostage told police he sensed an opportunity — during the 911 call — so he used his belt and buckle and began to fight back.
As the man’s belt buckle went swinging through the air, Lehman left the men’s room, so the hostage then chased after his captor “fearing he was going to harm someone else,” the complaint says.
As Lehman ran through the store, he was toting two knives, police said. Customers screamed as the defendant passed by and the now-former hostage shouted out to be careful of him because he was armed, according to the charging document. In the ensuing confrontation, three shots were fired and Lehman fell to the ground.
The hostage noticed a sharp pain in his hand at this moment, he later told police. It turned out his thumb had been accidentally shot off.
Police said they repeatedly implored the defendant to drop the knife and saw him holding a blade over his head “as if he was about to swing down or slash” the hostage before the shooting.
The defendant was critically injured and taken to a nearby hospital. There, unsolicited, he asked a detective if “he was on the news” and “what happened to the guy that was chasing me?” according to the complaint. The next day, a member of the hospital’s psychiatry staff spoke to him with police present and asked his intentions regarding the hostage. Lehman allegedly said he intended to use the man for “leverage” but did not elaborate, the charging document says.
The defendant appeared in court this week for a bail hearing, according to a courtroom report by local ABC affiliate WISN.
“By all appearances, you went to a busy store, at a busy time of day, and for no reason whatsoever, terrorized everyone who was in that store,” Commissioner Daniel Rieck told Lehman.
The commissioner also said the incident resulted in a life-changing injury for the man who had been taken hostage.
“You just did it for the hell of it,” Rieck told the defendant, according to a courtroom report by local NBC affiliate WTMJ. “That’s what scares me. That’s what really scares me.”
To which Lehman responded, “I didn’t do it for the hell of it.”
The defendant has since been transported to the Waukesha County Jail, where he remains detained on $1 million cash bond.
As the purported dead man’s switch, investigators say the device turned out to be a spring clamp tool outfitted with razor blades.
Lehman is next slated to appear in court on Aug. 27.
The post Man armed with ‘dead man’s switch’ tells Meijer shopper to glue his hands to the floor and requests ‘multiple hypnotists’ during hostage standoff in grocery store, police say first appeared on Law & Crime.
