Elias Santistevan hung up on police negotiators during a five-hour standoff Monday, but he continued to pick up the phone and talk whenever they called him back.
Experts in hostage situations say negotiators must use their communication skills to build a psychological umbilical cord with the hostage taker to convince them to calm down and give up.
Losing that connection can cost lives like it did last week in a southeast Denver apartment complex when Santistevan took a gun, shot his 5-year-old son, Deion, and then killed himself.
“It’s something you carry with you for the rest of your life,” said retired FBI hostage negotiator Clint Van Zandt, who was working in Waco, Texas, when children were killed during a standoff at the Branch Davidian complex.
“You lay in bed at night and say, ‘What did I miss? I should have acted earlier.’ You ‘should’ yourself to death because somebody died on your watch,” Van Zandt said.
Doug Stephens, commander of Den ver’s crisis-negotiation team, says stabilizing a person’s emotional peaks can be done only by listening and clearly understanding what the person is trying to say about their situation.
“Obviously, it’s nothing like the movies. It’s not as easy as that sometimes,” Stephens said. “Mostly it’s just people talking or sitting on the phone or over a bullhorn and trying to calm them down.”
Denver’s hostage negotiators are mostly detectives from the Police Department’s criminal investigation division who volunteer to take on that extra duty.
All 24 members of the team have gone through a minimum of 40 hours of realistic-based scenario training developed by the FBI. They also have periodic training in which they engage in role-playing with a hostage taker or an emotionally disturbed person.
Van Zandt, who just published a book, “Facing Down Evil,” about his work as an FBI negotiator, says measuring Santistevan’s potential for violence is something that officers probably did from the moment they contacted him.
“I’ve had guys tell me they were going to die, they were going to die right then,” Van Zandt said. “I give them a reason to live for the next hour or for the next 24 hours.”
Hostage takers frequently make demands of police. In Monday’s case, Santistevan demanded time to talk to his wife.
Van Zandt says when people ask to talk to friends and family, it could be a sign that they are trying to give their last will and testament before they die.
Requests for food, water, transportation, money or the promise of escaping prosecution are all signs that communication is still possible, Van Zandt said.
One of the ways to persuade a person to give up is to minimize the trouble they’ve gotten themselves into.
“You can be Gandhi and you cannot talk them out of committing suicide,” Van Zandt said. “They’ve made up their mind, and they are not going to change it.”
Santistevan’s friends have said they tried telling him he wasn’t going to do much time if he just gave up.
“You have to measure how angry, how nasty, how vindictive he was against his wife,” Van Zandt said. “The ultimate punishment would be to take the life of their son.”
Whether talking to friends and family during the standoff helped or hurt the negotiations is unknown.
“I have allowed people to talk to outsiders,” Van Zandt said. “Sometimes, these people would help; the challenge is they are not trained negotiators.”
In cases where he allowed others to talk to hostage takers, Van Zandt would give them a 5-minute negotiation course, sit at their side and frequently slip notes on what to say or not to say.
Santistevan’s wife, Chanell Trujillo, criticized police for the way they handled the standoff and the domestic problems the couple was having. She claims a man known to her as Mike, who was held hostage inside the apartment at the time, told them that police prematurely threw flash-bang grenades inside, prompting Santistevan to kill.
Denver police maintain Santistevan fired a shot first, then they threw the flash-bang grenades into the apartment.
Van Zandt said sometimes negotiators reach a critical point when they believe that their man is going to kill a hostage and decide that they have to employ tactics to save lives.
Aurora SWAT officers reached that critical moment Nov. 15, 2003, when Alexander Max Ishmael Valdez, 31, began firing several gunshots inside his apartment in the 9900 block of East Louisiana Drive.
His girlfriend hid inside her bedroom closet with her 14-year-old son and called police at 6:10 a.m. on her cellphone.
When police arrived, they heard shotgun blasts and took cover. SWAT was called in, said Rudy Herrera, Aurora police spokesman. After hearing more gunfire, SWAT team members simultaneously rushed through the apartment’s entrance and blew a hole in the wall of an adjacent apartment leading to the bedroom where the girlfriend and her son were hiding. The girlfriend and her son were unharmed.
Valdez fired a shotgun. One of SWAT officers was struck in the foot, Herrera said. Officers returned fire and killed Valdez.
On July 5, the only person U.S. Marine Joshua Christianson was threatening was himself, said Lt. Rick Arnold, commander of the Loveland Police Department’s SWAT team.
Distraught and apparently afraid of going to Iraq, he held Loveland SWAT officers at bay with a military assault rifle for seven hours in a cul-de-sac. At times, he pointed the gun at his head with his finger on the trigger and a bullet in the chamber, Arnold said.
In descending order of priority, officers consider the safety of hostages, bystanders, police and finally the suspect, he said.
SWAT team members tossed Christianson a bag with a cell phone so they could speak with him, he said. For hours they negotiated with him as he threatened to shoot himself.
“We looked for an opportunity when he had his finger off the trigger,” Arnold said. “You either take advantage of opportunities or let them pass forever.”
At about noon the chance came. Christianson pointed the rifle to the ground and took his finger off the trigger while answering a call from a Loveland negotiator.
Officers detonated six flash-bang grenades and shot him twice in the shoulder with rubber bullets. SWAT team snipers had their rifles aimed at him just in case Christianson took aggressive action and deadly force was necessary, he said.
But fortunately, Christianson dropped flat on his stomach and extended his arms in surrender, Arnold said.
“We strongly believe that we are in the life-saving business,” he said. Officers believe they may have saved the young soldier’s life that day, he said.
Even if the scenario Trujillo describes of Denver officers taking the first move proves true, Van Zandt said it doesn’t mean negotiators or police did anything wrong.
“Authorities have to make a decision. They have to go in for the sake of the boy.”
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-820-1219 or at fcardona@denverpost.com.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
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