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MPR News Staff
St. Paul

Kidnapping charge for man in U hotel standoff

A man leans out of a window of a hotel after being in a standoff for a day.
A man leans out a window in a building where a suspect had been in a standoff with police for over a day, on Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018, at the Graduate Hotel at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minn.
Renee Jones Schneider | Star Tribune via AP File

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A Woodbury man who held off police for more than 36 hours at a hotel earlier this week on the University of Minnesota campus has been charged with kidnapping.

Lincoln Bowman, 46, also was charged with false imprisonment in the incident that began near midnight Sunday, the Hennepin County Attorney's Office said Thursday. He is expected to make his first court appearance Friday.

Charging documents say Minneapolis police received a call from another police department saying Bowman was suicidal, threatening to harm family members and had an out-of-state warrant.

Police went to the address and found it was the Graduate Hotel on the university campus and that Bowman had a woman in the room.

"Officers knocked on the door, but he refused to open it," the county attorney's office said in a statement. "Instead, he indicated to officers he was armed, would hurt any officer who came through the door and that he would set the hotel on fire, the complaint states. They could also hear the voice of a woman inside."

Police negotiators began talking with Bowman. At about 8:20 p.m. Monday, the woman was able to leave the room. With Bowman alone, police ultimately decided to fire tear gas into the room, break down the door and arrest him, the complaint states.

The woman told police that she has dated Bowman for several months and Sunday night they decided to get a room at the hotel, but he began acting strangely, the prosecutor's office said, adding, "He took her cell phone and would not let her leave the room or even go to the bathroom without him watching."

Police say they moved to end the standoff with Bowman after he began lighting small fires and threatened to burn the building down. University authorities said the incident ended without injury.

Bowman is being held at Hennepin County jail. His bail has been set at $100,000.