COBB COUNTY, Ga. — Exclusive new video shows employees rush into a restaurant for help as a man held bank workers hostage.
Only Channel 2 Action News got the video showing one of the first 911 calls during the deadly bank standoff in Cobb County.
One by one, bank employees came to a nearby Chick-fil-A restaurant for help.
Fielder tells Channel 2's Mark Winne that at 9:34 a.m. Friday an employee from the Wells Fargo bank nextdoor came in to call police about a man who said he had a bomb in the bank.
“The bank employee runs in, she asks one of our leaders to use the phone to call 911,” manager Mitch Fielder said.
“There’s the bank employee still on the phone with 911,” Fielder added, pointing at the surveillance video.
Fielder says at 9:41 a.m. a Cobb County police officer entered the store and within a few minutes Fielder had learned of two hostages in the bank and found himself, at police request, locking down the restaurant.
No customers or employees were allowed to leave until the all-clear hours later.
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Fielder tells Winne these are lockdown skills he's learned partly in volunteer training at Buckhead Church.
“I’m wanting to let everybody know it’s going to be OK, but I also know it’s going to be OK cause I have faith in God that he would protect us,” Fielder said.
A document from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation names Officer Dennis Ponte as the man who fired the shot that killed hostage-taker Brian Easley.
A GBI document from an April 2016 incident also names Ponte.
“Officer Ponte – it was part of his training with the SWAT team. He had to use deadly force,” Chief Assistant District Attorney Jesse Evans said.
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