After wounding a policeman who had responded to a silent alarm, the robber took four bank employees hostage. The unfolding drama captured headlines around the world and played out on television screens across Sweden. The public flooded police headquarters with suggestions for ending the standoff that ranged from a concert of religious tunes by a Salvation Army band to sending in a swarm of angry bees to sting the perpetrators into submission.
Holed up inside a cramped bank vault, the captives quickly forged a strange bond with their abductors. Olsson draped a wool jacket over the shoulders of hostage Kristin Enmark when she began to shiver, soothed her when she had a bad dream and gave her a bullet from his gun as a keepsake. By the second day, the hostages were on a first-name basis with their captors, and they started to fear the police more than their abductors.
This can include war or combat, serious accidents, natural disasters, terrorism, or violent personal assaults, such as rape. People with the disorder may experience PTSD symptoms such as frequent fear, stress, and anxiety stemming […]. In November , a group of Iranian students stormed the U. On the contrary, they have been very nice. But, you know, Olof, what I am scared of is that the police will attack and cause us to die. Even when threatened with physical harm, the hostages still saw compassion in their abductors.
Ultimately, the convicts did no physical harm to the hostages, and on the night of August 28, after more than hours, the police pumped teargas into the vault, and the perpetrators quickly surrendered.
The police called for the hostages to come out first, but the four captives, protecting their abductors to the very end, refused. In the doorway of the vault, the convicts and hostages embraced, kissed and shook hands. The captives were confused, too. Psychiatrists compared the behavior to the wartime shell shock exhibited by soldiers and explained that the hostages became emotionally indebted to their abductors, and not the police, for being spared death.
