The Lee County Sheriff’s Office (FL) released video footage over the weekend that showed the moment a police sniper shot through a computer monitor to kill a bank robber who took hostages.
The incident happened in February when an unnamed 36-year-old man armed with a knife and claimed to have a bomb entered a Bank of America branch in Fort Myers.
“He had two hostages at this point and we tried to negotiate with him continuously,” Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said at the time. “At one point during negotiations he became physical, he started to put one of the hostages in a headlock and he had the knife to her throat.”
“SWAT team was in place, when he presented deadly like that, our SWAT sniper shot and killed the suspect,” he added.
Police said in a video released on Saturday that the sniper rested his rifle on the shoulder of one of the other SWAT team members as the team stood in the lobby of the bank.
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The video shows that given the number of SWAT team members present and the position of the sniper, it would have been difficult for the suspect to see that law enforcement was preparing to neutralize him.
The sniper shot through a computer monitor and struck the suspect in the center of the forehead, killing him instantly, police said.
The moment the sniper takes the shot, the suspect’s head is blurred in the video to spare viewers the graphic scene.
WATCH:
WATCH: Harrowing video shows moment sniper shoots through computer monitor and in between 2 hostages, taking out hostage-taker at Florida bank pic.twitter.com/jt2anv3fo0
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) June 9, 2024