By Christopher Williams,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Yolanda Mata pointed the big black handgun at the woman’s head.

“What, you think I won’t kill you?” she shouted.

It turned out she wouldn’t. The woman, played by Liz Belanger, escaped injury Wednesday as students dressed as tactical squad troops stormed the VIP room on the third floor of the Colisee and freed its would-be president.

Mata, also a student at Andover College, was taken into custody by fellow classmates in her crisis negotiations class.

The fates of two other hostage-takers weren’t so peaceful. They pretended to be shot and killed by fake guns that looked all too real for some of the mock-hostages.

One of them, Stephanie Turmenne, trembled during the exercise as her captors shouted orders for her to lie on the floor and “shut up.”

“I definitely felt it was real,” she said later, still pale, during a class debriefing.

Professor Peter Mars, who moonlights as a lieutenant at the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department, liked what he saw.

He viewed the hour-and-a-half enactment of a police standoff with a full company of roles, which he cast with his 23 students.

The students had worked all semester for this moment. They had studied textbooks and sat through lectures, learning what to think, do and say during a live hostage crisis.

Seth Roberts, the student who played hostage negotiator, crafted the scenario, arranged for the space and equipped the students with real-looking props and costumes. The students ad-libbed their lines and choreography.

Mars had cautioned them to remain in character throughout. Whoever smiled or laughed would lose a grade.

There were only a couple of false notes, he said.

Mata, Johnny Lane and Mohamed Aden burst through the front door to the conference room shouting, “Freeze!” and “Get on the ground!” The five students sitting at a conference table quietly complied.

No one screamed or protested. They should have – and would have in a real hostage situation, Mars said. “You were like lambs being led to slaughter.”

Another thing. When the hostage takers picked up the phone, they were instantly talking to the hostage negotiator, he said. Usually, it takes at least several minutes and multiple phone transfers to get the two parties talking.

Mars praised the authentic language used by the hostage takers – punctuated with shouts and profanity. He also said their actions, including jabs, kicks, duct-taped hands and much gun-pointing, looked like the real thing.

Through a hallway and around a corner from the VIP room, hostage negotiator Roberts had paced the stadium seats, barking commands at the faux cops. Students clad in SWAT garb trained their guns at doors that led to the VIP room.

A newspaper reporter sparred with a city administrator and a police chief kept her ranks in line.

After the ordeal, students sat around a table critiquing their performances.

Roberts conceded he was stymied at times by the captors – whose demands were difficult – and by the high stakes.

“I was really, really scared,” he said.

Derrick Webb, the only hostage who was killed, said it felt authentic.

“That blood capsule, though, was disgusting,” he said.

Mars said Webb’s death wouldn’t count against his or any of the other students’ grades.

“Even though there was a loss of life, unfortunately that happens in real life, too.”

The second part of the final exam may be a more frightening scenario to his students, he said. A written exam is scheduled for Monday.

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