Connecting with hostage taker helped some endure

Woman recounts ordeal at Trader Joe’s on July 21

LOS ANGELES — “I just shot at a cop,” the man with the gun and blood dripping from a bullet wound in his left arm told one of dozens of people he’d taken hostage inside a Los Angeles supermarket.

In a gripping account reported Friday by Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian, one of those hostages describes how she and others survived the ordeal on an oppressively hot July 21 afternoon.

“I told him, ‘There’s always hope. I know you have a good heart, and I know you don’t want to hurt anybody,’” MaryLinda Moss said she told Gene Atkins, as she placed her hand over his heart.

“When you put your hand on somebody’s heart,” she explained, “it grounds them. I was trying to ground him, and manipulate him, yes, in the best way.”

They had connected after the 28-year-old gunman, still bleeding, asked for help and Moss took off the shirt she was wearing over her tank top and wrapped his arm with it. Another hostage suggested he allow them to use his belt for a tourniquet and Atkins, without ever putting his gun down, complied.

“You don’t know what I’ve done,” Moss said he told her.

Police have said officers chased Atkins to the store after he shot his grandmother during an argument, then kidnapped his girlfriend and fled. He crashed his car into a light pole outside the Trader Joe’s near downtown Los Angeles.

As he ran inside the store while exchanging gunfire with officers a 27-year-old store manager caught in the crossfire was struck by a police officer’s bullet and killed.

At another point during the standoff, Atkins released a hostage after the man told him he had left his two children outside in his car. He took the man’s cellphone before he left and police soon called him on it.

As they spoke, Atkins saw a SWAT officer on the roof of a nearby cheese shop with a gun pointed at him.

“Everyone is now absolutely terrified,” Moss said. “Gene is yelling, and he’s saying, ‘If you don’t get that guy off the roof, somebody’s going to get hurt and it’s going to be your fault just like it was with that other woman!’”

Eventually, all but four of the hostages were released.