Murder Suspect Still on Crane

…This Isn’t Going to End Well

UPDATE: Roland has finally turned himself in after a 56 hour stand-off with police. I didn’t believe that this would end well for Mr. Roland. Actually, it probably won’t end up well for him once it’s all said and done.

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As of this morning, Carl Edward Roland, 41, was still perched 18 stories up on a construction crane. Roland, who is wanted in connection with his ex-girlfriend’s beating death, has been holding off police and negotiators since Wednesday at 4:00 p.m.

Wednesday afternoon, Roland approached a construction worker at the site, in Atlanta’s trendy Buckhead district, told him he had already committed a crime and “hurt someone,” and demanded that the worker get out of the way, Pennington said. The worker did, and Roland scaled the crane — and climbed out onto its horizontal arm. He is believed armed with “some type of knife,” Pennington said.

Roland’s criminal history in Florida shows arrests for three misdemeanors, including driving under the influence, domestic violence-related battery and disorderly conduct, or fighting.

Look, theoretically everyone is ‘presumed’ innocent until proven guilty…but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this guy looks guilty as hell. And I don’t beleive this is going to turn out very well for Mr. Roland.

He’s sleep deprived, he’s hungy and thirsty (he’s refused any water and food since climbing the tower more than 40 hours ago), and he’s probably a bit distressed. I don’t think Mr. Roland plans on jumping. Most likely he would have already done so. But the longer he stays up there, the more disoriented he will become. And the more likely it is that he will take a misstep and fall to his death.

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MORE:

• Rachael, from Hiram, Georgia, mostly just seems pissed that Roland is tying up and shutting down the Buckhead community. She has some suggestions on how to end the stand-off so that Atlantans can get back to their daily grind:
  

  #3 — Let the crowds through the barracades so that he can actually HEAR them chanting, “jump, jump, jump” at his pathetic tortued soul.

• The Volatile American has his own thoughts on how this would ideally play out:
  

  Suspect: I am not coming down.
  Police: Okey Dokey, no problem.
  Negotiator: What do we have here?
  Police: Beat his girlfreind to death, currently hiding on top of that crane…well not really hiding, just hanging out.