PORTLAND – A state police tactical squad smashed through a plate-glass window with guns ready to fire to bring an end to a tense seven-hour standoff with a Maine State Prison inmate who was holding two hostages, officials said Tuesday.

Hostage taker Michael Chasse dropped to the floor and was taken back into custody as the episode came to a rapid conclusion following a decision by state police officers to smash through the office window, Maine Corrections Department Martin Magnusson said.

Chasse already had cut the hostages’ faces with a makeshift knife. When police stormed the office, it looked like a scene out of a TV drama, Magnusson said.

“We were at a point where if he had gone any farther with the assaults, we were prepared to use deadly force,” the commissioner said from Augusta.

When the incident unfolded shortly before 2:30 p.m. Monday, the state’s largest prison went into a Code White, designating a hostage situation. Magnusson said it was the first Code White since the state’s maximum security prison opened in 2002.

Using a 5-inch prison knife as a weapon, Chasse took a prison staff member and inmate into an office of the prison’s program building and cut their faces, Magnusson said.

Chasse was animated, demanding and threatening as corrections staff, later joined by the state police tactical unit, negotiated with him.

Throughout the ordeal, Chasse kept hold of his weapon and made it clear he was “more than willing to use it,” Magnusson said.

At the same time, police were prepared to take him out.

Shortly after 9:30 p.m., Chasse released the prison employee from custody. Less than a minute later the tactical unit made its move.

The employee was treated at Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport and released. The inmate hostage was treated at the prison infirmary and released.

Multiple charges are expected to be filed against Chasse, Magnusson said, adding that additional details would come out as the investigation proceeds.

Chasse first gained notoriety more than a decade ago when he broke into the home of former Sen. William Cohen’s younger brother and attacked him with knife.

Back in 1997, Chasse and two other men were charged with confronting Robert Cohen, whose brother was President Clinton’s defense secretary at the time, at his home in Brewer. During the confrontation, Chasse was shot in the neck by Robert Cohen.

The following year, Chasse threw powdered detergent into the eyes of officers outside a courthouse in Dover-Foxcroft, where he was standing trial.

The escape was captured by TV news cameras. Later, Chasse stabbed two officers and fled in a pickup truck before being apprehended hours later in a boat on Sebec Lake. He was convicted in both the Cohen stabbing and the escape, and isn’t scheduled for release until 2029.

The Maine State Prison, which has 899 inmates, contains the so-called “Super Max,” which houses the state’s most notorious prisoners. Chasse was a maximum-security prisoner but was not being held in the Super Max, Magnusson said.

AP-ES-07-01-08 1441EDT

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