Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel highlighted how the agency successfully carried out two hostage rescue operations within 24 hours.
In a weekly internal update to agents, Patel expressed that he is “grateful” to the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team as well as the FBI’s Sacramento and Los Angeles divisions for coming into action “following reports of a bomb threat and hostage situation” at a bank.
Patel also said that “the subject was cleared, and all 10 hostages were rescued safely.”
“In less than 24 hours, our Hostage Rescue Team – the FBI’s elite Tier 1 tactical unit – mobilized not once but twice, even flying across the country to California in the middle of the night, and in the process saved dozens of lives from two individuals carrying live explosives,” Patel said in a statement. “In both Bakersfield, California and Germantown, Ohio, he executed with the accuracy, professionalism and complete commitment to the mission without fail that makes this FBI one of a kind.”
In a statement, Patel reported that in a hostage situation in California, a man “armed himself with explosives and barricaded himself in the Kern County School Superintendent’s office and took ten innocent people hostage.” Patel said the FBI sprang into action and deployed the CIRG Hostage Rescue Team.
Patel continued to explain that less than 24 hours later, the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team was “back at work” in Cincinnati, Ohio, where they “responded to a man hiding an explosive device in his home in a residential area.”
Patel continued, “Our team cleared the surrounding apartments, arrested the individual, and located 8 explosive devices in the home – showing that the FBI once again prevented a potentially deadly situation.”
Patel also shared that a hostage rescue team had rescued ten hostages in California, after the team “responded to a call from Germantown Police and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Ohio that an individual may be preparing to detonate dangerous devices near a residential area.”
