After a 12-hour standoff, an armed man holed up in his Maple Grove townhouse surrendered to police early Saturday.
Police were first called to the 7600 block of Wedgewood Court in Maple Grove about 2:30 p.m. Friday after relatives said the 54-year-old man had made suicidal comments, said Capt. Tracy Stille of the Maple Grove police. Officers found the man in a bedroom with a shotgun pointed at his head, Stille said. The man refused to put down the gun, so the officers retreated and called in a tactical team.
For the next several hours, the man refused to communicate with police. When robots were sent in to check on the man's welfare, it was hard for them to navigate through the cluttered townhouse because of the way he had barricaded himself, Stille said.
Finally, a team was able to go in the house and negotiate with the man to put down the gun and surrender, which he did about 2:30 a.m. He was taken to North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale, Stille said. Maple Grove police, Plymouth police, the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office SWAT team and crime lab, Minneapolis police and the Maple Grove Fire Department responded.
NICOLE NORFLEET
