Body cameras show Lancaster hostage suspect demanded police "shoot me in the head"

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Body camera footage released Monday shows Lancaster Police trying to reason with a hostage-taking suspect, as he holds a knife to his hostage's throat and demands that police "do whatever they have to do" before he kills her.

The nearly six-minute-long video details the ending of a tense half-hour standoff on Saturday between police and Troy Kirk, 31 of Lancaster. Due to the video's graphic nature, ABC 6/FOX 28 is presenting a version edited for sensitive content.

In the video, officers can be seen staging on either side of Cristy's Pizza on North Pierce Avenue. At the restaurant's rear, Kirk is seen holding the back door open and gripping a store manager around the shoulders, while holding a knife to her throat.

"Don't value my life over her life!" Kirk can be heard yelling at police officers, before adding: "I do not want to take someone's life, but I swear to god I will!"

Kirk had earlier stormed into the restaurant and began barking orders at employees, before brandishing the knife and taking a female manager named "Tiffany" hostage. A spokesman for Cristy's Pizza said the manager had ensured all other employees got outside safely before she was grabbed.

After police move into position and beg Kirk to release his hostage and calm himself, an officer near the restaurant fired upon Kirk with a single fatal shot as Kirk held the hostage away from his body. Lancaster Police say the body camera video shows that officers followed department procedures in authorizing and using deadly force. The officer who fired the shot has been placed on "special duty" as the state's Bureau of Criminal Investigation also looks into the incident.

On Monday, Kirk's mother spoke only with ABC 6/FOX 28 and said she is heartbroken. Chari Kincaid says her son was diagnosed schizophrenic about a year ago, after a previous addiction to meth had left his brain permanently altered.

"He's been worried for days that the police were going to get him and shoot him, and I think he just snapped," Kincaid said emotionally. "He wanted them to shoot him. He was sick and he was tired; he hadn't slept for eight days because police were going to kill him, he thought."

Kincaid says she tried to have Troy Kirk admitted for mental healthcare days before Christmas, but he refused to go and did not commit a crime for which police could arrest him.

"He was a good man. You can ask anybody," she said. "He would have never, never done that in his right state of mind. Never."

Kincaid also offered several apologies to the woman her son held hostage, as well as the other employees and "everybody that he hurt and scared."

Kirk's criminal rap sheet is short, with only a drug paraphernalia charge and a guilty plea for assault — which Kincaid says happened in a conflict with another inmate while Kirk was being held in jail.

Funeral arrangements have not yet been made.