Age 10 Boy Rescued after Held Hostage by Gunman for 30 Hours, Says 'God Had Him'
On Friday night Jan. 12, fear consumed the household of a Liberty Township apartment in Ohio. It all started when 10-year-old Sincere Trammell went into the kitchen to check on his mom.
A man was holding his mother at gunpoint, asking for $10,000 in cash. When the guy spotted him, Sincere ran off in fear for his life.
What happened next would lead to hours of negotiation. Sincere said his mom ran out of the home with the boy’s uncle to get help.
That’s when the man, later learned to be a family friend and possibly connected to drugs, chased the young boy into a room. Soon, calls came into police about a hostage situation inside the home.
According to Sincere, he and 31-year-old Donald Gazaway hid in a closet until moving to the home’s open-door garage that Saturday. SWAT officers had surrounded the area as the two sat in the back seat of a running vehicle.
As negotiators tried to persuade Gazaway to give up, Sincere said he never left his side, even refusing to let him go to the bathroom.
The crazed man, protected by four guns, was keeping the young boy “close” during the entire standoff.
“I was a little bit scared but he made sure I felt comfortable and things like that,” Sincere said. “He kept saying he was gonna let me go regardless.”
For the next 30 hours, Gazaway exchanged 20 to 30 bullets with police. Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones was convinced that the suspect was suicidal.
“We didn’t think at times that we were going to get a good resolve from this,” Jones said. “We felt that he wanted us to shoot him at different times.”
Jones’ predictions were half right. Sincere later said Gazaway was debating whether or not to kill himself.
“I said that jail would probably help you get better at life, and that would be a better option to do,” Sincere recalled trying to persuade Gazaway to turn himself in.
“So I said it’s better to have a punishment than kill yourself, and I’m saying that God basically will give you another chance to become a better person in life.”
Finally, on Sunday, the car ran out of gas and Gazaway decided to turn himself over to cops, but not without using Sincere as a human shield one last time. In addition to a $1 million bond, he currently faces charges related to “kidnapping, felonious assault and inducing panic.”
Thankfully, Sincere survived the ordeal unharmed. Retelling the story in an on-camera interview, the 10-year-old explained what kept him calm during those frightening hours with Gazaway.
“I just knew that God had me,” he said.
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