While Salt Lake City's Main Library opened as usual at 9 a.m. Monday, a damaged room and vivid memories of Saturday's violence belied the business-as-usual bustle of patrons and staff.
Saturday, a man armed with a handgun and a bomb held 10 people hostage in the library's second-floor meeting room for 51/2 hours before he was shot and killed by a deputy sheriff. Other hostages escaped early in the ordeal. A demolition team later detonated the bomb in the room rather than risk moving it.The explosion shattered windows and mangled furnishings but caused no structural damage to the building at 209 E. 500 South. The room will be closed for remodeling for about three weeks.
Library director J. Dennis Day said employees who were caught up in the fatal episode were scheduled to meet through the day with police investigators and crisis-intervention counselors "to work through some of the issues."
Meanwhile, library officials also planned a "rigorous review" of security procedures to determine whether they require any fine-tuning or an overhaul.
Asked if the incident could lead to weapon detectors and uniformed security personnel becoming fixtures at libraries, Day said it was unlikely, "but we're not excluding anything at this moment."
A preliminary evaluation of the procedures and Saturday's events indicates that "more went right than wrong," according to Day. "If you look at what occurred - at our evacuation procedures, at the reaction of our staff during this tragic event - it clearly made a difference."
Day said the city libraries have policies on how to deal with emergency evacuations and that librarians are trained on how to handle "unstable individuals." That training paid off Saturday, he said, noting that while one employee was summoning police, others were evacuating the building and attempting to calm the agitated gunman, who was identified as Clifford Lynn Draper, 29.
The fast call to 911 permitted Lt. Lloyd Prescott, who was teaching a law enforcement class next door to the library, to infiltrate the hostage room before the standoff began, Day said. With a weapon he had concealed in his sweatsuit, Prescott shot Draper 51/2 hours later when it appeared, according to witnesses, that the situation was beginning to deteriorate.
Draper reportedly told negotiators he was going to shoot someone and added, "you know who I mean." SWAT officers heard the shots but had no idea who'd been hit.
Day said that like other urban environments, the library is faced with trying to maintain a safe and open setting without harboring intoxicated, unstable or disruptive individuals. While those creating a problem are ejected, Day emphasizes that it is the library's policy to "welcome and embrace" anyone seeking library services.
Of the more than 500,000 people who visit the Main Library each year, only a very small percentage cause any problems, Day said.
Draper had been seen in the library earlier in the week watching Tibetan monks performing a religious ceremony, but there were no reports that he had acted improperly or suspiciously until Saturday.
"I will be interested myself to know why he chose the library," Day said. "The preliminary indication is that it was simply a place where people had gathered and wasn't aimed specifically at the library or the monks."