CHARLESTON, S.C. – The mayor says a hostage situation in a Charleston restaurant has ended with the gunman being shot by police.
Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg said the chef who was shot by the gunman Thursday has died.
Interim Charleston Police Chief Jerome Taylor said all the hostages at the restaurant were rescued safely. He didn’t say how many there were.
Tecklenburg says the man who took the hostages is in critical condition. He was described as dishwasher who had been fired.
Authorities did not release the names of the gunman or the man killed.
Taylor says the restaurant on tourist-heavy King Street was packed at lunchtime and his officers helped rescue the wounded man and a number of diners.
“This is not an act of terrorism. This is not a hate crime. It is a disgruntled employee,” Tecklenburg said.
The shooting was reported shortly after noon Thursday.
Peter Siegert, 73, and his son Peter Siegert IV, 45, were quoted by The Post and Courier of Charleston as saying that just after several waitresses and kitchen workers walked out the door without saying a word, a man in an apron with a gun came out of the kitchen and locked the front door.
He said, “‘I am the new king of Charleston,”‘ the Siegerts said.
The man told diners to get on the floor and move to the back of the restaurant. The Siegerts said they escaped out a back door and didn’t know how many people were left behind.
One of the restaurant’s owners, John Aquino, told WCSC-TV that a dishwasher who had been fired came back to the restaurant and shot a chef to get revenge.
The first officers to arrive were able to get the injured man to safety, Francis said.
Charleston police sent SWAT teams and a bomb disposal unit to the area. Authorities instructed people inside to stay inside and those outside to leave the area.
The site is a few blocks away from Emanuel AME church, where nine black members of a church were killed by a white man during a June 2015 Bible study. Dylann Roof was sentenced to death in the case.
It is also just several blocks from where more than 100 cruise ships dock in Charleston each year.
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