Standoff with prison escapee ends after police storm room

SALT LAKE CITY -- A police standoff with an Idaho inmate who escaped from a work-release program and was being sought in connection with a Utah bank robbery has ended in Salt Lake City.

Joe Dee Stang was taken into custody Saturday morning after barricading himself in a room at the Allstar Travel Motor Hotels for 14 hours and claiming to have a female hostage.

SWAT teams stormed the room and found the 45-year-old Stang in an attic area. Police said there was no hostage, but they seized a gun in the room.

Stang, who fled from the Idaho Falls Community Work Center on July 3, is a suspect in Thursday's robbery of a Zions Bank branch in Salt Lake City.

He had been serving sentences for burglary and malicious injury to property in Bonneville, Bannock and Bingham counties in Idaho.