Hostage Kills Captor, Escapes Standoff

Associated Press

Cavalier Daily

Cavalier Daily

1996-03-27

Hostage Kills Captor, Escapes Standoff
CONCORD, Calif. (AP) For Mary McIntyre, the only way out of a hostage standoff with an obsessed admirer was to obey his order to shoot him.
She shot, ending a five-hour ordeal.
Jociel G. Bulawin was killed Monday night at McIntyre's embroidery store with a shot to the head.
McIntyre, 35, does not face any charges and, in fact, won praise from police.
"She was -very calm, very at ease," police spokesman Maurice Jennings said.
McIntyre, who never handled a gun before, said she was anything but calm. "l was so terrified," she said. "He was sitting right there with two guns right next to me."
She said Bulawin, a 33-year-old former employee, held her hand on a gun during the standoff and aimed it at his head, ordering her to fire.
"You ruined my life. You might as well end it," she quoted him as saying.
But she was afraid that the gun was not loaded and that Bulawin planned to shoot her with the second gun if she pulled the trigger.
She told him she would not shoot him, but he threatened her life repeatedly.
Five hours into the standoff, he convinced her.
"There was no other way to get out alive," she said.
"l thought if I do this, I'm just going to do it and run. I was afraid of him pulling a fast one on me," she told reporters. "I'm so relieved that I know he will not be coming back."
The siege began when Bulawin entered McIntyre's Contra Costa Trophy and Embroidery store with two semiautomatic handguns. Most of the employees fled, except for a woman who hid under a desk unseen throughout the standoff.
McIntyre tried to run, too, but Bulawin grabbed her hair and dragged her back into the shop.
Bulawin was an architectural draftsman who worked part time designing embroidery for school jackets and other merchandise for the store, said his brother Jay Bulawin. McIntyre said he was fired because she did not like his work.
In court documents, McIntyre said Bulawin began to claim the two had a relationship last spring. McIntyre is married and is the mother of two children.
McIntyre said Bulawin continued calling and harassing her, sometimes up to two or three times a day.
"His accusations are disturbing, and it seems to be something different each week. In the last phone call, he asked, “What about that baby you promised me?'" she wrote in a petition for a restraining order.
McIntyre had phone blocks installed in order to put a stop to the phone calls, and a judge issued a restraining order against Bulawin. But McIntyre said she was never able to have the papers served because of Bulawin's actions Monday night.