JSO: Suspect has confessed to firing gun, holding hostages in attempted bank robbery

There are still a lot of questions unanswered after a hostage situation on Jacksonville’s Northside ends with the suspect in jail.

Amazingly, none of the 13 people that were being held captive were hurt.

This all started as a report of a bank robbery in progress and then a report of shots fired at the Community First Credit Union on Edgewood Avenue. The arrest report we've now obtained says 23-year-old Nicholas Humphrey, of Tampa, walked in to the bank with a dog, locked the door behind him, and fired his gun while demanding money. Sheriff Mike Williams says Humphrey held a gun to the head of customers and threatened to kill them, at which point police determined they needed to move in. We've now confirmed they were helped by being able to see inside of the building.

“He had developed a pattern of getting 40-50 feet away from the hostages, so we felt like we could intervene at that point,” Williams says.

At one point, two hostages escaped- those hostages had been hiding and Humphrey didn't know about them. JSO says that distracted Humphrey long enough for them to get between him and the remaining 11 hostages, securing them and leading to his surrender. JSO initially reported 11 total hostages, but they have since clarified that, with the two who escaped, there were 13 total being who were trapped in the building.

Humphrey’s arrest report shows he is charged with armed robbery and thirteen counts of kidnapping. The report says he has confessed to what happened.

Williams says they’re still investigating whether this was truly intended to be a bank robbery.

“He very well could have been trying to rob the bank, he could have been trying to make a statement to his family, we could be dealing with a lot of things, we could be dealing with mental illness,” Williams says.

Humphrey was uncooperative on the scene, according to Williams, but he wasn’t clear if the demeanor had changed at this time.

JSO is further investigating why Humphrey targeted this CFCU specifically.

One thing is clear- the work done by the SWAT team and other responding officers is “off the chart”, according to Williams.

“I can’t think of a worse situation to be in as a law enforcement officer, and they performed incredibly,” he says.

Nobody involved- from the hostages to Humphrey to the dog- were hurt in this entire incident.