FBI personnel killed a man Wednesday morning who was suspected of holding people hostage in an office building in downtown Bakersfield, California, ending an overnight standoff, police said.

The shooting happened around 4:20 a.m. Wednesday, Bakersfield police said, more than 15 hours after reports of a standoff that involved reports of a bomb threat in a building that houses a Chase Bank branch.

The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The authorities said that all of the hostages, who were employees of the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, were unharmed and had received medical evaluations.

The Police Department said earlier Tuesday that it first received a call reporting a bomb threat around 1 p.m. Tuesday. The police arrived at the scene to find that a man had barricaded himself with several people inside a second-floor office.

The suspect told officers that he had explosives attached to himself, Assistant Chief Jeremy Blakemore of the Bakersfield Police Department said at a news conference. “He also told law enforcement that additional explosives had been attached to some of the hostages, which we confirmed based on our own observations,” Blakemore said.

Officials did not give a motive, and Blakemore said that it did not appear that the school district employees were “an intended target in any way.”

Other workers and customers fled the four-story building, and police evacuated the surrounding area, Blakemore said.

Suspect Identified

The FBI identified the suspect as Anthony Scott Searles-Harris, 41. Sid Patel, the special agent in charge of the agency’s Sacramento field office, said that Searles-Harris had “a criminal history of using weapons to commit violent offenses” and was a registered sex offender. The suspect served in the U.S. Army in 2006 and 2007, Patel said, and he was dishonorably discharged after going absent without official leave.

Blakemore said that Searles-Harris tied up five of the hostages. Officials did not release any other details about the people that were held.

Patel said that Searles-Harris asked early in the negotiation with the police for FBI negotiators to become involved.

Two people were released after negotiators communicated with the suspect by phone, police said. The first was released around 4 p.m. Tuesday, and the second around 8:30 p.m.

“Negotiations did stall, and the suspect refused to release any more victims,” Blakemore said, explaining its department’s request for assistance from the FBI, which took control of the response about 9 p.m.

Bakersfield, a city of about 425,000 residents about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles, is the seat of Kern County.

The episode unfolded as votes were being cast in California’s primary elections. State Assembly member Jasmeet Bains, a Democratic candidate for Congress, canceled an election night watch party that had been scheduled for Tuesday in downtown Bakersfield.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Francesca Regalado and Isabella Kwai
c. 2026 The New York Times Company