Ruston to be featured on Dateline television show
Posted 01-09-03
By George Graham
Staff Writer, The Ruston Daily Leader
“I’ve got three black women, two white women. This is war!”
“What?”
“This is W-A-R. I’m going to die today.”
It was Ruston, Sunday, Dec. 13, 1987, and with those words, one of the strangest hostage situations in our nation’s history began.
Dwight Riser, 38, who was wanted for sexual assault and two counts of aggravated assault in Houston, Texas, was armed, had hostages and was holed up in Room 44 of what was then the Economy Inn and is now the Relax Inn, near the junction of Interstate 20 and Trenton Street South.
The situation was so bizarre, in fact, that when the Dateline television show producers decided to do an interactive television broadcast of a hostage situation last year and contacted Senior FBI Hostage Negotiator Clint VanZant, he advised calling Ruston Police Department hostage negotiator Jay Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh said.
“VanZant told them to get hold of Jay Kavanaugh of the Ruston Police Department,” he said, “because that was the strangest hostage situation he had ever seen.”
The program can be viewed Friday on KTVE, Cox Cable Channel 10 or people can log on to the Dateline Web site at (www.msnbc.com/news) to play along.
The program will present the scenario, including the actual ending, and offers viewers an opportunity to participate to see how their solution to the crisis compares with the actual response of police professionals.
Some of the men currently on the Ruston Police force and Lincoln Parish Sheriff’s Department were there that day when negotiations began with Riser: Chief Randal Hermes was an investigator, Captain Jim Hilton was in charge of outside operations, Wayne Houck was sheriff, and Jay Kavanaugh was the department’s hostage negotiator and in charge of inside operations.
Eventually, local officers were joined by Louisiana State Police troopers and agents from the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Kavanaugh said.
“He (Riser) was armed with a sawed off shotgun and several knives and fired the shotgun inside the room several times,” Kavanaugh said. “It was intense.”
Police later discovered that Riser had shot out the room’s television set and several windows although he falsely told authorities he had shot off one of his fingers.
It turned out that only two hostages, Mary Grant of Ruston and Addie Douglas of Hico, were inside Room 44 but the negotiations for their safe release continued from 11:30 a.m. until the shocking conclusion at 7:42 p.m., The Ruston Leader reported at the time.
That period of time was spent in standoffs and decisions, punctuated by shotgun blasts, that kept all involved on edge. Armed officers with rifles and drawn pistols remained hidden behind any available cover, hoping for a clean shot, the newspaper reported.
“We had no SWAT Team at the time, but the way he was barricaded in the room, it didn’t matter anyway,” Kavanaugh said. “We couldn’t get a shot.”
Riser told Kavanaugh he wanted to die. So, police were left in a quandary and the hostages in a dangerous situation. But the kidnapper did have a list of demands.
He wanted a specific minister, the Rev. Robert L. Singleton, to personally advise him and specified that his burial would be in Louisiana instead of his native Texas.
He also had one other bizarre demand.
With an entire block evacuated, officers in firing positions with weapons aimed at Room 44, traffic re-routed around the motel, and an armed man with two hostages inside, the question on everyone’s mind was, who would give in first — Riser or the police?
The ending of the dramatic standoff surprised everyone at the time.
The producers of the show, which will air at 9 p.m., want everyone to enjoy the show and even if people don’t play along interactively, the surprise ending should be worth the time spent.