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© St. Petersburg Times, published November 4, 2001
ZEPHYRHILLS -- A brief shootout between authorities and a bank robbery suspect led to a more than seven-hour standoff Saturday morning on the second floor of a roadside hotel.
It didn't end until Kristian Haynes, 26, shot himself in the head and Pasco County sheriff's deputies found his body inside his room in a cloud of tear gas.
The standoff inside the Holiday Inn Express on State Road 54 in Wesley Chapel forced hotel guests from their rooms and detoured overnight traffic trying to get on and off nearby Interstate 75.
"I couldn't imagine what was going on," said guest Mike Schelonka, a visitor from Illinois in town for a Saturday wedding.
The chaos began about 10:30 p.m. Friday, sheriff's spokesman Jon Powers said. After getting a tip from the Orange County Sheriff's Office, three Pasco deputies with a dog burst into Haynes' room. He was wanted in the robberies of both an east Orlando and a rural New York bank, authorities said.
"(The deputies) were greeted by gunfire as they attempted to enter his room," Powers said.
One deputy fired back, but no one was injured, he said.
Deputies backed away, and for the next seven hours Haynes used mattresses and furniture to barricade himself inside his room, Powers said.
Those hours were marked by silence.
Only the hum of passing trucks and the occasional howl of dogs could be heard from the closed stretch of State Road 54.
The hotel's front desk accepted phone calls as usual, though workers wouldn't comment on the ongoing drama.
It was so quiet that several guests said they slept through almost the entire standoff.
"I didn't hear anything," said Schelonka, who was staying on the third floor. "I was pretty tired."
Then the silence broke.
The rooms next to, above and below Haynes' room had been evacuated before deputies tried to arrest him the first time. About 5 a.m., the rest of the hotel was cleared, guests said.
They said they awakened to phone calls instructing them to come to the lobby and not to use the elevator.
"I just saw all the police around the building, but I didn't know what was going on," said third floor guest Adrian Hernandez of Tarboro, N.C.
Negotiations had ended with Haynes, and a SWAT team was preparing to make a move. About 5:45 a.m. authorities fired a can of tear gas through his window. About the same time, Haynes shot himself, officials said.
He was pronounced dead inside an ambulance at 6:13 a.m., Powers said.
Had Haynes lived, he would have faced four counts of attempted murder of law enforcement officers (one for each deputy and one for the dog) and armed bank robbery charges in both Cortland, N.Y., a small city in the central part of the state, and Orange County, Powers said.
Cortland officials were seeking Haynes, who has a prior conviction in a shooting there, in the Oct. 23 armed robbery of a bank, said Capt. Marty Coolidge of the Cortland County Sheriff's Office. He said Haynes pointed a gun at a teller and demanded money. Three days later he fled to Orlando.
Officials there were seeking him in the Tuesday morning robbery of an east Orlando bank, Orange County sheriff's spokesman Angelo Nieves said. Haynes implied he had a weapon and escaped with money.
He had been staying at the Holiday Inn since Wednesday, Powers said.
Ray Royce and his wife, on their way to Port Charlotte from Ontario, were still piecing together their night on Saturday morning.
"We thought it was someone dropping something above us," said Royce, who stayed on the first floor. "There was a popping sound.
"I guess that was the gunfire."
-- Times staff writer Brady Dennis contributed to this report. Ryan Davis can be reached at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6245 or rdavis@sptimes.com.