A Raleigh man is in custody after a hostage situation early Friday at a Wake Forest apartment complex.
Wake Forest police responded to a call from a woman reporting a disturbance around 11:30 p.m. Thursday at New Hope Village Apartments at 133 N. Allen Road.
Other WRAL Top Stories
The woman said that Roman East, of Raleigh, made verbal threats to her and was intoxicated.
Before officers got to the apartment complex, East, 27, locked the woman out of her apartment with a child inside. East and the woman had a prior relationship. He is not the child's father.
Police said East remained barricaded inside the residence and refused to cooperate with officers, despite repeated requests from police negotiators until around 6:40 a.m. Friday.
The WRAL Breaking News Tracker was outside when East came out of the apartment. Officers told him to get down on his knees. When he did not, officers appeared to deploy a flash bang device that caused a loud noise and smoke. East then laid on the ground and was arrested.
Police said the child who had been taken hostage was not injured. The child is back with his mother and is doing OK, police said.
"We are talking about a situation where tensions were running very high," said town of Wake Forest spokesperson Bill Crabtree. "He had been very uncooperative for the past several hours, so when he came out, and he didn't obey those orders, they had no other choice but to take him down the way they did."
East was charged with felony second-degree kidnapping and misdemeanor resisting a public officer. He was also served with an outstanding warrant for communicating threats from an unrelated incident. Authorities are holding him at the Wake County Detention Center.
A woman named Hannah Norris told WRAL News that she and East ended their relationship in 2017. Norris is not the mother of the child taken hostage.
"I've known him to do a lot of bad things, but kidnapping was not on that list," Norris said.
Norris said she cut East off after he threatened her life.
"I was sick of him thinking it was OK to do that, and so I filed the charges," Norris said.
Norris said her charges were against East for communicating threats.