KU law student has close view of standoff

Summer clerk's room right below gunman's at Wichita hotel

Theresa Freed thought her husband Chris Loethen was joking early Tuesday when he said he was calling her from the Wichita Police Department.

But when Loethen described the three-hour police standoff with a gunman in the room above his at English Village Inn, Wichita, Freed’s disbelief turned to dismay. The standoff ended after police shot and captured the gunman Monday night.

“I was upset,” said Freed, Lawrence. “Of course I was happy he was OK. I was even more shocked when he said he was going to spend the night at the motel. He assured me it was safe because the police were still around.”

Loethen, who is working as a summer law clerk for a Wichita firm, said he was watching television around 7 p.m. Monday in his first-floor motel room when he heard three loud bangs overhead.

“I wasn’t sure what it was at first,” said Loethen, a Kansas University law student. “I was hoping it was anything but gunfire.”

He then heard three to five more loud bangs and crawled under his bed. After more shots rang out, he called the hotel manager’s office. The management told him a man in a room directly over his was shooting and that police were in the parking lot.

Loethen took his mattress and a table and barricaded himself in the bathroom. He climbed inside the bathtub and waited for a phone call.

As he waited, he began to dismantle a four-paned window, he said. A police officer then called him and told him it was unsafe for him to leave his room through the window.

“But the gunfire just kept coming,” Loethen said. “I decided I didn’t want to wait it out in the hotel room.”

Loethen, who is 6 feet 4 inches, crawled out the bathroom window around 7:30 p.m. Four police officers covered him as he ran down the alley and around the corner of the motel.

After an interview with police, they let him return to his room at 1 a.m.

The gunman, a 45-year-old Wichita resident, was recovering from a bullet wound in his right hand at a hospital Tuesday, police said. No other injuries were reported, and charges had not been filed.

Though Loethen’s wife said she would rather he stay at an apartment, Loethen said he feels safe and he likes spending only $28 a night.

“I think it could happen anywhere,” he said. “The hotel owner seems like a real honest guy. And it’s still the cheapest place in Wichita. It may be even cheaper now.”