Officers find themselves barking up wrong tree in five-hour standoff (Hold muh leash alert)

The Seattle Times ^ | November 6, 2002 | By Dave Birkland and Ian Ith

[Damocles]

Wednesday, November 06, 2002 - 01:58 p.m. Pacific

Officers find themselves barking up wrong tree in five-hour standoff

By Dave Birkland and Ian Ith
Seattle Times staff reporters After five hours of attempted negotiations, SWAT team maneuvers and repeated barrages of tear gas, officers stormed a North Seattle home this afternoon to discover they had spent the entire morning surrounding a dog.

Police ended their standoff just after 12:30 p.m. today after officers swept through the house in the 14300 block of Dayton Avenue North and found no human suspects, spokesman Duane Fish said.

The SWAT team thought there was a man inside the house, possibly armed, because at about 11 a.m., they shot gas into the house and saw the door open slightly and the window blinds move, Fish said. They assumed a man inside opened the door to let in fresh air.

The dog must have pushed the door open, Fish said. It was uninjured.

If there was a man inside the house, he must have slipped away earlier in the morning, Fish said.

Police were called to the house about 7:30 a.m. by a man who said he had left the home and said shots had been fired inside. After police arrived, two women and a man left the house, but said no shots had been fired, Fish said. But the three didn't agree whether a man was still inside, or whether he was armed.

Negotiators tried to reach the man all morning, but couldn't get anyone to respond, Fish said. (No joke!)

Police said they have been called to the house before, but didn't elaborate.

The standoff began less than 12 hours after Seattle police fatally shot another armed man during a standoff at a downtown hotel. The incidents were not related.

In the standoff last night, Seattle police SWAT team Officer Dan Curtis fired one bullet to kill an apparently suicidal man and end the ordeal (guess he got his wish) at the Best Western Loyal Inn. The standoff lasted seven hours and closed Denny Way.

Shawn Charles Howell, 33, of Haywood County, N.C., had repeatedly asked police to kill him and finally stepped onto a balcony at the hotel at 2301 Eighth Avenue and pointed his pistol at officers, police spokesman Scott Moss said.

"You don't wait for him to shoot you, because it only takes a split second for him to pull the trigger," Moss said. "Once the threat is there, you have to act."

Howell barricaded himself in his room at about 2:45 p.m. when hotel management called Howell and told him he had to check out, police said. When he refused, the motel cut off his phone. The man, apparently upset about a breakup with his wife, asked to call his mother "one last time," police said.

The hotel management then told him they were calling police. "That would be a bad idea," police said Howell told the hotel operators.

Police swarmed to the hotel, anticipating a standoff by the management's description of Howell's mood, police spokesman Scott Moss said. Negotiators spent hours on the phone with Howell.

The standoff closed parts of Eighth Avenue, Denny Way and Dexter Avenue North for hours.

"Our hope was to exhaust him, and wear him down so he'd hopefully realize what he was doing was wrong," Moss said. "But he was adamant about taking his own life. He made it very obvious that he wanted to die, regardless of how it happened."

At about 8:15 p.m., Howell stepped out on his room's balcony. He was holding a pistol. He went back inside and spoke to hostage negotiators on the phone again, then returned to the balcony and was shot, Moss said.

Curtis, 31, has been on the force since 1994 and is a longtime member of the SWAT team. He was placed on administrative leave after the shooting, as is routine, and was not involved in the standoff this morning.

Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company

[Damocles]

Here's a pic of the officer in charge. Might explain a few things!

[Damocles]

mmmm...

[Procyon]

I assume they are going to perform a paraffin test on the dog to determine whether it had recently fired a weapon.