Parent holding teacher hostage in California school

RIVERSIDE — A parent who barged into his daughter's Southern California elementary school held a 70-year-old teacher hostage for hours as police tried to talk him out of a classroom, police and relatives said Tuesday.

Police and federal agents remained at Castle View Elementary School at dusk, some six hours after they were called there.

A SWAT team and negotiators were on the scene but he was "not responding to our commands for him to come out," police Officer Ryan Railsback said.

It wasn't known whether the man had a weapon, he said.

The parent scuffled with a staff member who tried to make him sign in at the front office late Tuesday morning, Railsback said.

People at the scene told news organizations that the staffer appeared to have a bloody or broken nose as he was taken to an ambulance.

The man then barricaded himself inside a classroom with a teacher identified by relatives as 70-year-old Linda Montgomery.

Montgomery has taught at Castle View for 20 years, said her granddaughter, Ariana Montgomery.

"She's really good with kids," she told the Riverside Press-enterprise . "She's really helpful and sweet."

The children were at lunch and were not in the classroom at the time, said Justin Grayson, a spokesman for the Riverside Unified School District.

The parent wasn't identified by police but Carl Jackson told KABC-TV that the man was his nephew. He said the man had a daughter in first grade at the school and that he had suffered some sort of emotional meltdown that morning.