ST PAUL, Minn. — A St. Paul woman is charged with four counts of felony kidnapping after police say she held a number of people hostage at gunpoint inside a gas station.
The charges against 31-year-old Kanisha Deon Wiggins are spelled out in a criminal complaint filed in Ramsey County District Court Thursday.
Prosecutors allege that shortly after 3 p.m. Tuesday squads were dispatched to the Speedway at 846 Johnson Parkway on reports of a hostage situation. A 911 caller told dispatchers that his girlfriend texted him and reported she was being held at gunpoint by a person she didn't know.
Responding officers arrived and saw a woman, later identified as Wiggins, holding a handgun and pacing back and forth. They described her as looking agitated, gesturing with the gun.
Police say they attempted to negotiate with the defendant using both a PA system and the store's phone, and during those talks Wiggins reportedly demanded to speak with her father "in federal prison." Officers say Wiggins stated if she was not allowed to speak with him, she would "shoot hostages."
The criminal complaint says during the negotiations a door to the Speedway opened and the caller's girlfriend sprinted to safety. A short time later police heard a gunshot. Officers responded by forcing their way into the locked gas station by shooting out a glass panel on the door. Once inside they found three additional hostages and helped them out of the building. Wiggins was discovered in a storage room, and a 9mm handgun was recovered with a live round in the chamber ready to fire.
Investigators spoke with the hostages, who said Wiggins entered the walk-in cooler where they were doing business and said they were needed out in the store. Prosecutors allege once on the store floor, Wiggins produced a pistol and said she needed to speak with her father, and this was the only way it would happen. She also talked about livestreaming the incident on Facebook.
One witness told police that Wiggins held them for about an hour before sending her outside to get the defendant's phone so she could livestream. Instead she "sprinted like I've never sprinted in my life" to safety.
After her arrest, prosecutors say Wiggins asked for a lawyer and did not participate in an interview. During negotiations with police, she told authorities that the family who kidnapped her was in protective custody. She said that family set up her father, who was then sent to prison.
When investigators reached Wiggins' parents they learned her father was not in prison, and that she had been acting "strangely" since returning home from Tennessee following a divorce. Her mother said the defendant had never been diagnosed with a mental illness but was drinking a lot and perhaps doing drugs.
St. Paul police report that few days before the alleged hostage incident officer had been summoned to a home on Case Avenue, where Wiggins told them her father was trying to poison her autistic brother. The brother was checked out and found to be fine, with no evidence of poisoning.
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