NEWPORT CITY, NC (TIP): A 46-year-old Indian-origin motel owner in Newport city in the US state of North Carolina was shot dead by a homeless trespasser, who barricaded himself inside a room at the property before taking his own life, police said. Satyen Naik was discovered with a gunshot wound outside the motel when police arrived on the scene on Wednesday. “Just after 10, the 911 center received a call about an individual trespassing at the Hostess House,” said Newport Police Chief Keith Lewis.
“A disturbance was heard in the background, and just following that a second call was received that an individual had been shot. Within moments officers arrived on scene,” The media quoted Lewis as saying.
Once Naik was safely away from the building, emergency personnel took him to Carteret Health Care to receive medical attention. He was later pronounced dead.
“It’s a family-owned business and he operated this business daily with his family,” Lewis said.
Troy Kellum, the suspect, was discovered barricaded inside one of the Hostess House’s rooms.
“The suspect had barricaded himself in the room,” said Lewis, “which prompted us to alert the Special Response Team (SRT) and request their assistance in retrieving the barricaded person from the room.”
Lewis said that Kellum, 59, was a squatter at the Hostess House and other locations in the area and was thought to be homeless. For several hours, officers and Kellum were at a standstill as the SRT team’s negotiators attempted to persuade him to give up.
The SRT team is a tactical unit made up of individuals from various agencies in Carteret County.
While Kellum was barricaded in the Hostess House, Carteret County Sheriff Asa Buck said he and other officials opted to implement soft lockdowns in the area.
“Our Special Response Team arrived on the scene, and we talked about locking down the nearby schools. We wanted to make sure that the suspect was indeed barricaded in that room.”
“Our negotiators from our SRT team were on the telephone with him and talked to him for a fairly lengthy period to get him to come out of the room where he was barricaded and to give himself up peacefully,” media quoted Buck as saying.
The officers determined that the SRT team would have to enter the room after Kellum refused to concede. Kellum died at the scene after shooting himself with a handgun as the SRT team entered the room, according to Lewis.