Ex-Wife, Son Held Hostage for 21 Hours : Crime: Man surrenders to Anaheim SWAT team after long vigil. He was apparently upset by his former spouse’s plan to remarry.

ANAHEIM —  A man who did not want his ex-wife to remarry surrendered to police Thursday morning after holding her and their 8-year-old son hostage for 21 hours in an apartment house, authorities said.

Ernest Boykins, 35, had kept about 40 police officers at bay since 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Anaheim Gardens West complex, where he had gone to visit his former spouse, Anne Hinton, and his son, William.

As heavily armed SWAT teams surrounded the building, he finally released Hinton, 30, at 8:25 a.m. and freed their son 25 minutes later, officials said. Neither was injured.

Boykins finally came out of the apartment about 10 a.m., an hour after throwing a .25-caliber pistol and a hunting knife with a 6-inch blade out of the apartment, according to police.

“He just broke down after a while,” Lt. John Haradon said. “I think he was tired. We all were. He came to the realization we weren’t leaving.”

Boykins, who is 6 feet tall and weighs 300 pounds, was taken to the Anaheim police station, where he was booked on charges of assault with a deadly weapon, kidnaping and brandishing a weapon. He is being held in lieu of $100,000 bail. His arraignment has been set for today in Municipal Court in Fullerton.

The tense situation began when Hinton telephoned a friend Wednesday afternoon and said that Boykins was not letting her and their son out of her apartment. Police said Boykins apparently was upset that his ex-wife was going to marry another man in a few days.

Early reports to authorities indicated that Boykins had gasoline inside the apartment, but officers did not find any flammable liquids after the surrender, Haradon said.

During the standoff, authorities evacuated about 40 tenants from the 225-unit complex at 2900 W. Lincoln Ave. Many sat across the street until evening, then went to a shelter set up by the American Red Cross at Savanna High School.

Others spent the night on the grass of a nearby apartment house or in their cars, said 19-year-old Julie Byrone, who slept in a vehicle with her relatives. She was swimming when her dad told her that tenants were being evacuated.

“We were in our bathing suits,” Byrone said. “They wouldn’t let us back in to change. We had to stay out all night. We were cold.”

After Boykins turned himself over to police, his mother, Marian Boykins of Monrovia, said her son had been depressed for a long time because of personal problems.

He is unemployed and overweight, and “they took his children from him,” she said. “My son is not crazy. He’s not a man who will run away from his punishment.”

Times staff writer Mark Landsbaum contributed to this report.