GREEN BAY (WTAQ-WLUK) — Green Bay Police hit a kidnapping suspect with a pistol and wrestled away his knife Sunday after discovering him holding his ex-girlfriend hostage at a Green Bay home.
Police arrested 47-year-old Celio Jaimes-Gomez during the Sunday incident. Police say he kidnapped Araceli Bautista-Benitez after confronting her and her current boyfriend on Green Bay’s east side and drove her to his home on the west side where police converged and found Jaimez-Gomez holding her at knifepoint.
“An officer asked her if she had been stabbed, and she indicated that she had,” Green Bay Police Commander Paul Ebel told WTAQ. “So at that point the decision from the supervisor on scene was ‘Breach the door'”.
An officer hit Jaimes-Gomez, forcing him down and allowing another officer to jump on Jaimes-Gomez and wrestle away his knife.
Ebel said that typically officers are trained to shoot in a hostage situation where a victim is threatened with immediate danger, but that the officer was not in position to make such a shot safely.
“In a dynamic situation like this you utilize whatever you have at hand,” Ebel said. “The officer who used the butt of his weapon…that’s what he had.”
Court documents say Bautista-Benitez received a cut to her finger when she was fighting to keep Celio from stabbing her. She also said she had pain from her hair being pulled, as well as neck and shoulder pain.
Jaimez-Gomez appeared in court Monday on charges of attempted 1st degree murder and kidnapping.
Check out part of the criminal complaint below:
“As the fight continued to happen, I was very concerned that Araceli would not be able to keep Celio from hurting her. I entered the closet and used my service pistol as an impact weapon on Celio. I used the bottom of my pistol and struck him in the head and face. This caused an immediate dysfunction, causing both of them to fall to the ground. Celio still had the knife and had an arm wrapped around Araceli’s neck. I pinned Celio’s head against the closet wall, while Officer Woods was attempting to pull the knife away from Araceli. I placed my pistol against Celio’s temple and gave several commands that I was going to shoot him if he did not stop. I could see that Officer Woods had control of Celio’s wrist and was attempting to pull the knife away. Due to the close proximity of everyone inside the closet, I was concerned of striking multiple officers and Araceli. Officer Woods was able to pull the knife away and Celio was decentralized and handcuffed,” the complaint quotes Officer Keith Rager as saying.”
