GARDEN centre boss Dick Andrews gave up the chance to walk free from a gun siege to stay with a fellow hostage.

Mr Andrews and co-worker Carolyn Cracknell were held at gunpoint at Woodborough Garden Centre on Friday October 6.

It has emerged that Mr Andrews, who eventually walked to safety at about 9pm, had been given the opportunity of leaving earlier but decided to stay with Mrs Cracknell. He has declined to talk about the incident but this week a villager who knows him well said: "That was very noble and typical of the man."

Mother-of-three Mrs Cracknell, who lives in All Cannings, was freed at about 3am.

About 40 police officers, many of them armed, descended on the village shortly after 4pm following a report that a man with a gun had taken the pair hostage at the Woodborough Garden Centre. Ambulance crews were on stand-by in the village and Wiltshire Fire Brigade also provided support.

Reports that a man with a gun had taken hostages started a 12-hour stand off during which armed officers surrounded the nursery and created a half mile exclusion zone which meant a number of families had to be evacuated.

After freeing the two hostages the man finally surrendered to the police at about 4am on Saturday morning concluding a tense operation which had been conducted from police headquarters in Devizes by Assistant Chief Constable Stephen Long.

Police had maintained telephone contact with the hostage-taker throughout the night with trained negotiators speaking to him and encouraging him to free his two prisoners and end the incident peacefully.

Shortly before 5am police announced the incident had ended without a shot being fired. Police recovered a semi automatic handgun and ammunition from the nursery office where the man had been holed up with the hostages.

Among the villagers who had to leave their homes was mother-of-two Gilly Macmillan who said she became alarmed when she saw the police helicopter hovering over the garden centre immediately behind her house in Nursery Barns.

Officers arrived and told her to take her children, Rose, two, and Max, five months, to safety. Mrs Macmillan said officers wearing flak jackets crept up to her bedroom window to look at the nursery before helping her pack clothing and food. She drove to her mother's home in Swindon where she met her husband, Julian, who she had alerted by telephone.

She and a neighbour with a baby spent the night in Swindon returning on Saturday when the incident was over.

On Monday, Alun Wheeler, of no fixed address appeared before magistrates in Chippenham charged with taking hostages, causing grievous bodily harm and firearms offences.

Wheeler was remanded in custody for seven days until October 16. He was represented in court by John Elliott who made no application for bail.