SHUT DOWN
Law enforcement say they arrested a man early morning on New Years Day after holding two women and a toddler hostage for hours in an apartment in Jeffersontown.
Police say the man, 46-year-old Christian Q. White, is a suspect in a Wednesday murder in Jeffersonville, Indiana.
At a news conference on Friday, Jeffersonville Police Chief Kenny Kavanaugh said officers responded to a call late Wednesday evening on the 800 block of French Street.
They found a woman shouting for help in a house and discovered a man who had been shot, Kavanaugh said.
According to Kavanaugh, police provided assistance to the man who later died after being taken to Clark Memorial Hospital.
“Our investigators immediately determined that this was a familial disorder,” he said.
Kavanaugh said the investigation continues Friday and law enforcement has not released any further information about the victim. However, he claimed that White was the person who shot the man.
“But Mr. Christian White from the Ohio area … he had a disorder with this family member and unfortunately it was at that time that he chose to take the acts and behaviors that he was doing and he was violent with a gun.” Kavanaugh said about the fatal shots on Wednesday night.
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He and Jeffersontown police chief Jeff Sanders said Friday law enforcement tracked White, who has a criminal history, at the Chestnut Ridge Apartments in Jeffersontown Thursday.
Sanders said White and a woman came outside early Thursday afternoon but ran back to an apartment when a uniformed officer approached. He also said that White was seen pulling a gun out of his pocket when the couple withdrew.
Police secured the building and asked the Louisville Metro Police Department for assistance, Sanders said.
He later said White called the police and said he had held people hostage, had just been released from duty and would not return alive.
The three hostages were the woman who was briefly seen outside with White, as well as another woman and her 2-year-old son, Sanders said. Law enforcement spent hours communicating with White and persuading him to release them all.
“Around 12 midnight (Friday) – and the reason I know this is because we heard all the gunshots and fireworks, people celebrating New Years Eve – we managed to convince him to post the 2 year old -old” said Sanders.
Then, around 2 a.m., they persuaded him to release one of the women, he said. But White still had one last hostage.
Just before 6 a.m. on Friday, Sanders said the police had dropped gasoline into the apartment and that both White and the woman he was still holding ran outside. The police arrested White “without incident”.
“Our concern was getting those hostages out of there,” said Sanders. “… The first call he made to our police station – he wanted to make sure we knew he was just out of prison and had no intention of returning, so this ended better than I predicted.”
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Kavanaugh, Jeffersonville’s police chief, said late Friday morning that his agency had White in custody and that he expected to bring murder charges against him to a prosecutor.
He said of White and the hostage situation, “He made it clear who he was, his crime story, and he made it clear that he wasn’t messing around. … This was a very, very volatile situation.”
Reach reporter Morgan Watkins: 502-582-4502; [email protected]; Twitter: @ morganwatkins26.
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