SUNSET -- A three-hour police standoff in a quiet residential area ended peacefully this morning when a 50-year-old Sunset man surrendered to Davis County SWAT team negotiators.
The man held officers at bay for more than two hours while he sat in his automobile, parked in the driveway at his home, followed an early morning high-speed chase through Davis and Weber counties.Sunset Police Chief Phil Olmstead said the man was taken into custody at about 7 a.m. and transported to the Davis Hospital and Medical Center for a mental evaluation. No injuries were reported either to the man or to arresting officers.
But Olmstead said there was a tense moment shortly before Davis SWAT officers arrived, when the man used a handgun to fire a warning shot through the floorboard of his vehicle to keep authorities at bay.
The incident began shortly after 3 a.m. at a home near 200 West and 1150 North when the man, who was reportedly despondent and talking to family members about suicide, grabbed his handgun and left in his auto.
Olmstead said the man spotted a police car and fled, leading officers on a high-speed chase that went north to about 20th Street in Ogden and then doubled back to a point near Farmington before the man headed north again and finally stopped in his own driveway.
"We got everybody out of his house and kept him contained to his car," the police chief said. "He would roll his window up and down to talk to us."
Following the incident with the warning shot, Olmstead said, the Davis SWAT team arrived about 4:30 a.m., and three negotiators began talking to the distraught man.
After more than two hours of negotiations, the man reportedly removed the clip from his handgun and surrendered to authorities without further incident.
"When you can place him in a police car, and neither he nor any officers were injured," Olmstead added, "I don't see how this could have turned out any better."