SHELBYVILLE, Ind. (AP) – Police stormed a convenience store Thursday and freed a customer held hostage for 20 hours by a man who had tied a vacuum cleaner cord around her waist, authorities said. The suspect was killed in an exchange of gunfire.

Negotiators had arranged for 29-year-old hostage Tammi L. Smith to come to the door to get a new telephone, with officers hoping to pull her out after a 20-hour standoff, state police 1st Sgt. Dave Bursten said.

Officers tugged on Smith, but the gunman yanked back on the cord and began shooting from inside the store.

“He pulled that cord back on me and they started firing shots into the store,” Smith said afterward. “I knew he wasn’t going to make it.”

Police pulled Smith free, and Dennis McAninch, 34, of Cincinnati, was fatally shot during the exchange of gunfire, state police 1st Sgt. Dave Bursten said. It was not immediately clear if he died from police or self-inflicted gunshots.

Smith said the gunman apologized as he tied the cord around her waist and gave her a necklace for his 13-year-old daughter. “He was really an OK guy to me, besides holding a gun to my head,” she said.

McAninch was released from an Ohio prison in January after serving about six years for escape and burglary convictions, authorities said. He was facing charges including burglary and receiving stolen property related to a February arrest in Cincinnati.

Jenny Irey, spokeswoman for the Hamilton County prosecutor’s office, said McAninch did not show up for a scheduled bond revocation Wednesday morning. Smith said McAninch told her he did not want to return to prison.

“He said, ‘That’s not the kind of life I want to live,”‘ Smith said. “I just kept trying to reassure him that nothing was going to happen to him if he would just do what they told him to do.”

The standoff began Wednesday after officers pursued a car carrying two men who fled as police tried to make a traffic stop.

The men pulled into the store parking lot, where one man was caught and the other dashed into the store after firing at officers.

Customers fled, but Smith, who said she was buying a soft drink and a newspaper, was trapped when she ran to the back of the store.

“I was a nervous wreck,” said Smith, whose husband rushed to the store after seeing their family’s van on television. “I have five kids and two stepkids and I just needed to get back to them.”

Sandy Ramsey, McAninch’s ex-wife, said he wouldn’t have hurt Smith.

“He’s a thief, not a killer,” she said. “He might have did a lot of dirt and he made bad choices, but he had a good heart.”

Shelbyville is about 25 miles southeast of Indianapolis.

AP-ES-06-03-05 0007EDT