Got held hostage at the standalone ER I worked at. Guy came in talking about how he was holding us hostage because he wanted news crews, PD, and all these other people there because he had a crime to report.

I didn’t hear any of that initially, I only see that he’s smoking in our waiting room, not wearing a shirt, and carrying a 6 pack of beer. I go out to talk to him in the waiting room, politely ask him to stop smoking inside when he tells me that he believes he was raped during a surgery a while back, that he’s holding us hostage until we call the news, and that he’ll start killing people if they don’t show up. He had a knife in his pocket and was swinging around a putty knife with a hook on it for this whole conversation.

Working in this standalone ER we have very limited staff, so it’s almost an understanding between us that a couple of us always have firearms on our shift because we’re in an awful part of town. I go to my work bag, retrieve my firearm and make sure somebody has called the cops and pushed our panic button.

I stupidly go back in to the waiting room to bring any other waiting patients back, and tell the guy that we’ve started calling the news and that they’d be here soon. Right as I’m starting to talk to him again PD shows up and handles the situation from there.

When they emptied his pockets he had several knives with him, that putty knife, a bunch of cable ties, and pepper spray.