Originally this was reported locally (Richmond) that everyone in the McDonald's saw all the police activity so they all ran into and locked themselves in the freezer.
That part seems to be missing now.
No gunman found after standoff
http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-now-standoff,0,3500791.story?track=mostemailedlinkHAMPTON -- Investigators were still trying late Monday to sort out the circumstances of a nearly four-hour standoff and reported hostage situation at a McDonald's that locked down schools and snarled traffic on East Pembroke Avenue.
Fourteen people -- 12 employees and two customers -- were rescued by Hampton Police Division's SWAT members, who used a key to open a locked exterior door to the restaurant's freezer and hustled them across the parking lot to safety nearly three hours after the ordeal began, Hampton Police Cpl. Allison Good said.
Officers retreated from the building and reorganized, and 50 minutes later, they re-entered the restaurant and swept through in search of the gunman.
He wasn't there, Good said.
Authorities initially were at a loss to explain how the gunman escaped. But later Monday, interviews with those who were rescued seemed to indicate that the incident might have been a prank that quickly escalated.
Investigators talked to the 14 who were rescued, and none reported seeing an armed man. Police responded to a cell phone call at 1:54 p.m. by a caller who claimed to be inside the restaurant, Good said. Management realized police were swarming around the business at Pembroke Avenue and Grimes Road and apparently ordered employees and customers to seek refuge in the freezer, which locks from the inside, Good said.
The first officers to reach the scene spotted a man standing at the McDonald's doorway. He quickly retreated into the restaurant and disappeared from sight, Good said. Investigators later identified him as one of the employees rescued from the freezer, Good said.
Meanwhile, more officers converged on the restaurant.
The department's SWAT and hostage-negotiation teams were summoned. Pembroke Avenue traffic was detoured. Phoebus High School, along with Jones and Spratley middle schools and Merrimack, Cary and Smith elementary schools, were locked down at 2:05 p.m.
More than 100 people milled about at various points around the crime scene. At Grimes Road and Morgan Drive, brothers Isiah Stephens and Jarmal Robinson said their sister, India Stephens, 22, was among those locked inside the restaurant.
Robinson said his sister called their mother and reported "she was locked in a freezer." Then the phone cut out, Robinson said.
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