Associated Press
The Hartford, Conn. bomb squad disposal unit arrives at a house where a man last night was holding his estranged wife hostage.
Hostage wife safe; house set afire
SOUTH WINDSOR, Conn. - A woman held hostage for hours by her estranged husband at their former home got out safely yesterday, said police, who surrounded the house as it was engulfed in flames.
Gunshots were fired at the South Windsor house shortly after power was cut to the neighborhood and a SWAT team geared up. Police used a bullhorn to tell the man, Richard Shenkman, to leave the house because it was on fire. Shenkman faces trial in the burning of a summer home the couple owned.
There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Shenkman claimed the house was booby-trapped with explosives, police said. A bomb squad had been on the scene since the standoff began yesterday morning.
Authorities say Shenkman abducted Nancy Tyler from a parking garage after he missed a court hearing. His attorney said the hearing was related to an order that he vacate the suburban Hartford home.
South Windsor police Cmdr. Matthew Reed said there was no confirmation of explosives in the house even though there were indications, such as "some wires and some other odd items."
Shenkman made several demands, said Reed, who would not elaborate. The Day newspaper, of New London, reported they included asking that Judge Jorge Simon, who presided over the couple's divorce case, remarry them. It reported he also requested a copy of the SWAT team procedure handbook and asked that police "back off the property," which he said they did.
Shenkman, 60, and Tyler, 57, have shared three years of contentious divorce proceedings, Keefe said. They married in 1993; a judge granted the divorce last year, but Shenkman has been appealing.
The state Appellate Court, in a decision released yesterday, rejected Shenkman's appeal. Shenkman had sought to delay the divorce proceedings until an arson case against him was resolved.
He is accused of burning the couple's beach home in East Lyme in 2007 hours before he was to hand it over to Tyler. The case is pending in New London Superior Court.
Shenkman also has other pending criminal charges, including threatening, violating a protective order and forgery, according to the state Judicial Branch.
Tyler's lawyer, Norm Pattis, said Shenkman's behavior during the divorce trial was "menacing, threatening, nothing short of bizarre." *
