Two patrons who were held hostage for hours in a Burlington bar on Monday told police they escaped after one of them hit their captor with a bar stool as he was making Molotov cocktails, according to a police affidavit that was released on Tuesday.
The suspect, Tyshawn Lee, 23, of Winooski, has since been charged with kidnapping, assault and a host of other offenses, court documents show.
He was arrested Monday night after a nearly five-hour standoff with police at T. Rugg’s Tavern in the Old North End. Police said Lee fled into the Elmwood Avenue bar after they tried to take him into custody on outstanding charges.
He is detained with no option to post bail at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans, and is scheduled to answer to the charges in Chittenden County Superior criminal court on Wednesday.
Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George, in a court filing on Tuesday, asked that Lee continue to be held without bail. The prosecutor said there is “substantial evidence” that Lee is guilty. She cited, for example, allegations that he’d wedged pool sticks in the bar’s front and rear doors to evade Burlington police officers.
An affidavit that contained accounts by three Burlington police officers described one, Officer Julian Gonzalez, attempting to detain Lee after seeing him walking on North Champlain Street during an unrelated traffic stop at about 2:07 p.m. Monday. Police said Lee had been wanted on charges of violating his conditions of release and felony identity theft.
Gonzalez wrote that, after he informed Lee that he was under arrest, Lee “held an edged cutting instrument to his neck with his right hand and pulled out another edged weapon in his left hand and held it out while pointing it at me.” Gonzalez pulled out his gun and Lee fled, the officer wrote, before Lee was seen entering the bar.
One of the two people described in charging documents as hostages — John Whyte, 58 — later told police that he was sitting at the bar with the other person, 37-year-old Sarah Metts, when he noticed police cruisers gathering outside and police began clearing out the bar. (The bar’s owner, Mike Dunn, told VTDigger on Tuesday that Whyte and Metts were regular customers.)
“Whyte said he didn’t fully comprehend the situation and did not know that Lee was ‘the guy,’ so he stepped to a corner of T. Ruggs and pulled Metts back with him,” police wrote. He said Lee told the pair “don’t move” and that he felt unfree to leave, deciding that following Lee’s commands was his “safest option.”
During this time, authorities said, Lee was speaking with crisis negotiators and reportedly asked that police provide him with a car in exchange for the release of the two hostages. The Burlington Police Department said it asked Vermont State Police for assistance at about 5 p.m., and the state agency’s tactical services unit arrived over the next two hours.
State’s Attorney George also said that Lee had shattered a glass at the bar and armed himself with the glass shards, along with a knife he had. Surveillance video, Burlington police said, showed him making the Molotov cocktails — a crude flammable device — with liquor bottles and rags at the bar.
It was at that point, around 7 p.m., according to the police affidavit, that Whyte and Metts acted.
“(Metts) said that she knew it was now or never and that they needed to act now because the situation was only going to end one way with Lee making Molotov cocktails,” officers wrote in the affidavit. “(Metts) advised that she and Whyte exchanged a hard glance, nodded their heads, and then (Metts) struck Lee with a stool in order to affect their escape and prevent Lee from igniting the Molotov cocktails.”
George alleged Lee’s actions show he poses a risk of fleeing to avoid the criminal justice system. “Mr. Lee will go to extreme lengths to avoid capture and prosecution including his use of weapons, threatening self-harm, threatening bodily injury to law enforcement, and threatening the safety of the community and specific members of the community,” she wrote in the court filing.
The most serious charges against Lee — two felony counts of kidnapping — are punishable by life in prison on each count. Prosecutors also charged him with two counts of manufacturing a destructive device and one count of misdemeanor arson, referring to the Molotov cocktails he made.
He likewise faces misdemeanor charges for allegedly spitting on emergency responders and police and for resisting arrest.
T. Rugg’s Tavern reopened as usual on Tuesday afternoon. Dunn, the owner, said he and his staff decided it was the appropriate response to the harrowing experience the neighborhood bar experienced the previous day.
“It’s very important to be open for the neighborhood,” he said in an interview. “You can’t hide from people doing crazy shit.”
Dunn, who described himself as a Burlington resident of 20 years, said he was “impressed” with the way Burlington police and Vermont State Police handled the incident.
“Their professionalism really, really shone through, and they resolved it in an extremely peaceful manner that I’m incredibly grateful for,” he said. “This incident could have gone awry and many different times.”
As of late Tuesday afternoon, Dunn said he had not heard from local elected officials about the hostage situation at his bar, which he thought was confusing.
“This seems like a pretty big thing that happened. … Maybe we should be looking back towards our own city,” he said, referencing the Burlington City Council’s discussions about the Israel-Hamas war on Monday night.
