Police End Standoff Peacefully

On Wednesday morning, the East Ridge Police Department SWAT team was called to a local motel after a man refused to leave after check-out time.

According to a press release, officers responded to the Super 8 Hotel at 6519 Ringgold Rd. on a report of a subject that would not leave his room after check out time at about 11 a.m. Officers contacted Jim Sanford Hunter, 64, who refused to exit the room and advised officers he was armed. Officers ran a records check on Hunter and found that he had felony warrants for terroristic threats from Gordon County, Georgia.

Hunter barricaded himself in the room and threatened violence if officers attempted to come in.

ERPD SWAT was called in along with a department negotiator. After over three hours of negotiating, Hunter exited the hotel room and was taken into custody without incident. Several rifles, shotguns, and handguns along with ammunition were located in the hotel room. Hunter was transported to the Hamilton County Jail to await extradition proceedings.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.