Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
NAVARRE - Seven young people were held hostage at gunpoint on Sunday by a crack-smoking man who later fatally shot himself, authorities said Monday.
None of the hostages - three girls and four males ranging from 12 to 24 years old - was seriously injured physically, although the suspect attempted to sexually assault the females, Santa Rosa County sheriff's Capt. Woody Seevers said Monday. He said the victims suffered emotional trauma.
The suspect, Jason D. Parker, 24, of Fort Walton Beach, died late Sunday after being airlifted to Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, 25 miles west of this Panhandle community.
Parker, who worked for a plumbing company, shot himself in the face in front of three male hostages and Deputy Doug Bringmans, who had found the victims near the Santa Rosa-Okaloosa County line, Seevers said.
"We may never know why or what drove this individual to do what he did," Seevers said.
Parker initially drew a gun on three females and two males, ages 12 to 19, who had gathered along a roadside about 7:45 p.m. and led them into the woods, Seevers said. Two men, ages 22 and 24, later were taken hostage as they searched for the others.
Two girls managed to call a parent on a cell phone and hinted at what was happening. The mother called deputies and reported the girls missing.
Parker told the five initial hostages he wanted them to watch as he killed himself, Seevers said. He fired a shot when a hostage questioned whether his gun was real. He then told the group to take off their clothes and he tried to assault the female hostages, Seevers said.
Parker fired another shot at the feet of one of the males, Seevers said. By this time two deputies had reached the vicinity, heard the shot and went into the woods.
The two men in their 20s found the group first and they, too, were held at gunpoint. Parker, however, let the females and the youngest male go free while holding the gun to one of the searchers.
That hostage spotted Deputy Bringmans approaching and tried to knock the gun away, but Parker then pointed it at himself and pulled the trigger, Seevers said.
Man thought to have killed tourist sentenced for theftMIAMI - An escaped Colorado convict was sentenced Monday to 17 years in prison on federal theft charges filed after authorities were unable to pin last year's suspected slaying of an Israeli tourist on him.
The FBI believes Ran Mesika, 22, was beaten to death with a tire iron in his van in Louisiana and that Jonathan Lee Vernier disposed of the body, discarded a mattress and hosed down the interior to cover it up. Vernier was arrested in the bloody van in Key West. Mesika's body has not been found.
Mesika's father, Shimon Mesika, coach of a professional soccer team in Tel Aviv, alerted the FBI when he realized his son's daily phone calls had stopped but his credit card was still being used.
Vernier had walked away from a prison camp April 19, 2003, while serving three years for auto theft in Garfield County, Colo. He was seen with Mesika on a Wal-Mart surveillance tape in Lake Charles, La., on May 2. Mesika told a San Diego friend by phone that Vernier had just finished a drunken-driving sentence. Vernier was arrested May 13 in Key West.
He would normally have faced about five years on his plea of guilty to interstate transportation of stolen goods.