Parramatta hostage standoff ends with father’s arrest (VIDEO)

GlobalPost

A man who took his teenage daughter hostage in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta, New South Wales, claiming to have a bomb in his backpack was arrested Tuesday after an 11-hour siege.

The hostage crisis may have been linked to a custody dispute, according to Australian news reports.

According to the Daily Mail, police smashed their way into the Parramatta office after negotiations with the 52-year-old broke down, at around 8 p.m. The man was arrested and his daughter, aged 11 or 12, freed after she ran crying from the building.

TV footage earlier in the day had showed the man, topless and wearing a barrister's wig, taunting police from an office window in the building on George Street in Parramatta, where the Family Court is located, Sky News reports.

Assistant police commissioner Dennis Clifford said police had tried to resolve the stand off peacefully, Sky reports.

"Towards the latter part of the time we've been here, those negotiations have started to break down and then deteriorate to a stage where police have taken action to break into the premises and take a 52-year-old man into custody."

The hostage drama began when the man brought his daughter into the Parramatta attorney's office just before 9 a.m. and told a lone clerk that he had a bomb in his backpack, the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC) reports.

The clerk, Betty Hor, said the man had demanded to speak to "someone from the local court," The Sydney Morning Herald reported on its website.

"He was meant to go to court today but he couldn't find this person, and I think he just snapped," Hor told the SMH.

Police declined to give details on the man's motive or confirm that he was in fact carrying a bomb, although TV reports later in the evening suggested a device of some sort of device had been found and was being examined.

"We are still concerned about what may be contained in a backpack that he has with him," Clifford reportedly told local media.

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