{"id":2186,"date":"1973-05-02T23:40:11","date_gmt":"1973-05-02T23:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/?p=2186"},"modified":"2014-09-02T20:22:08","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T20:22:08","slug":"gunman-slain-as-pupil-held-hostage-in-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/1973\/05\/02\/gunman-slain-as-pupil-held-hostage-in-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Gunman Slain As Pupil Held Hostage In School"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Melvin Burch, Eddie &#8220;Duke&#8221; Blake, and Robert Funches held the teachers and students at St.Cecilia School hostage for a terrifying afternoon in 1973.<\/p>\n<p>Police attempted to enter the building but encountered &#8220;gunfire erupt(ing) from three sides of the building&#8221;. Police Captain Gall Owens and a teacher, Terry Fox, tried to broker negotiations with the gunmen, but were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n<p>After their failed efforts, the gunmen requested to speak directly with Juliette Whittaker and she obliged, walking alone into the crossfire.<\/p>\n<p>The gunmen ended the stand-off shortly after speaking with Whittaker. No civilians or hostages were harmed, but one of the gunmen, Melvin Burch, was shot dead by the police, allegedly after repeating three times &#8220;I&#8217;ve come to die, kill me, kill me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The motives for the hostage-taking remained unclear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Melvin Burch, Eddie &#8220;Duke&#8221; Blake, and Robert Funches held the teachers and students at St.Cecilia School hostage for a terrifying afternoon in 1973. Police attempted to enter the building but encountered &#8220;gunfire erupt(ing) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[403,15,368,208,244,50,9,26,24],"tags":[129,424,133],"class_list":["post-2186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1-ball-of-confusion","category-1970s","category-the-fight-to-desegregate","category-steady-in-the-line-of-fire","category-movement-radicalizes-and-splinters","category-juliette-whittaker","category-peoria-an-introduction","category-schooled","category-segregation-desegregation","tag-black-panther-party","tag-juliette-whittaker","tag-st-cecilia-school-hostage-situation"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2186"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6144,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2186\/revisions\/6144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.becomingrichardpryor.com\/pryors-peoria\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}