| | KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- Six minor-league players for the Houston
Astros and a woman guest were tied up and robbed in their hotel
rooms by two gunmen, police said.
Police shot one gunman while the other escaped following the
Sunday night robbery at a Holiday Inn.
None of the players was hurt.
The players were identified as Morgan Ensberg, 24; Derek
Nicholson, 23; Keith Ginter, 23; Michael Rose, 23; Eric Cole, 24;
and Aaron Miles, 23. The woman was identified as Alicia Szczerba,
23.
"They're shaken up right now, but overall they handled
themselves well," Tim Purpura, the Astros' assistant general
manager, said.
The five players and Szczerba, a friend of one of the players, were in a
hotel room watching television when the gunmen burst through the
unlocked door about 11 p.m., Cmdr. Fran Iwanski, a spokeswoman for
the Kissimmee Police Department, said. They tied up the players and
the woman at gunpoint and took cash, she added.
The gunmen then moved to an adjacent room where one player was
staying by himself. Players in the first room, meanwhile, managed
to untie themselves, call 911 and lock the door to their room.
When a police officer arrived, one of the gunmen ran out of the
second-floor room and jumped over a railing to the ground. Police
were still searching for him.
The other gunman remained in the room pointing his gun at the
player while backup officers arrived.
"They tried to call him to give up and come out," Iwanski
said.
When the gunman apparently let his guard down, the player tried
to wrestle the weapon from him, police said. Officers heard the
struggle, broke the hotel room window and ordered the gunman to
surrender. They shot him when he refused.
"He would not release the weapon," Iwanski said.
The wounded gunman was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center
where he was in stable but critical condition.
A woman staying with her husband and son in the room underneath
the ballplayers' room said she heard yelling and screaming, the
shattering of the hotel room's glass window and three shots fired.
"It sounded like it was raining when the glass shattered,"
Gail Wolkowski of Thunder Bay, Ontario, said. "You saw police
running everywhere."
Later, maintenance workers washed away blood from the walkway in
front of the hotel room and covered the shattered window with a
wood plank.
The Astros have no intention of moving the minor leaguers out of
the hotel but were meeting with Major League Baseball safety
officials, Purpura said.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement was investigating the
police shooting. | |
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