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Janey- I don't know the specifics about this particular case, but I have been on a dozen or so active hostage/barricade situations myself, so I have a feeling for how these things go. These things are very dynamic...they are always changing depending on the behavior of the suspect.
I was a few hours into a suicidal barricade one night a few years ago. Our QRT team had already tried to evacuate everyone in the neighboring apartments. Now we're a few hours into the negotiation, and our dispatchers tell us that they just received a phone call from the apartment next door to the target apartment, wondering why all the police cars were outside. Our QRT team had knocked on that door several times, but apparently they had slept through the knocking. Now our team has to re-approach the target house in order to get those neighbors to safety. Luckily, we were able to keep the suspect on the phone while our team safely got the neighbors out.
From what I understand from the article, there was a team of officers that were trying to get some neighbors to safety when the suspect began to engage them. They didn't "abandon" their strategy... the situation changed.
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