Negotiating: A police officer talks with Sammie Wallace seconds before shooting the suspect after he put a knife to his two-year-old hostage’s throat (Picture: LiveLeak)

A man was shot dead at point-blank range by a police officer after he snatched a two-year-old girl out of a shopping trolley and held her hostage in a supermarket.

Sammie Wallace was shot in the head at close range after officers had spent 30 minutes negotiating with him to let the girl go.

Surveillance cameras at the Walmart store in the US state of Oklahoma captured the abduction and the shooting of the suspect, but police say the officer only fired when Wallace, 37, put a knife to the girl’s throat.

The footage shows Wallace grabbing the child from the trolley as her mother’s back is turned.




The woman, Alicia Keating, pleads with the man to let her daughter go as other shoppers crowd around.

She is then seen and heard calling 911 for help.

Give me back my baby: The girl’s mother pleads with Wallace to release her daughter after he abducted the girl in an Oklahoma supermarket (Picture: LiveLeak)

Police then arrive and clear the store and after 30 minutes of tense negotiation officers said Wallace started to talk about a satanic cult and was counting down from 60.

One of the officers, Capt David Huff, who was crouched in front of Wallace to talk to him, is seen moving quickly towards the hostage-taker and preparing to fire a single shot at his head.

The pictures stop at that point, but the police commentary continues and confirms that Wallace was killed. The child, who has not been named, was unharmed.

‘Our officer thought the child was being harmed at the time he did the shooting,’ Police Chief Brandon Clabes of the Midwest police department told reporters.

‘Obviously, our goal was to talk him down to get him to release the child.

‘I mean, we waited until the last second to use deadly force. No one wants to take a life, especially in the line of duty,’ he added.

The Oklahoma district attorney said the shooting on June 17 was justified.

Wallace, who was originally from Dallas, had served time in a Texas prison on drug and assault charges.

His family said he had a long history of mental illness.

Warning: Video contains scenes some people may find disturbing