Offices ended up in a standoff with a man who made multiple terroristic threats to his neighbors and law enforcement.
It started when a worried pastor contacted law enforcement after he said a man had sent threatening messages threatening to hang him and other members of his church. He said he didn’t really know the man who threatened him well, but he had hired him a couple of times to do work for him and the man had previously attended the church.
The man had previously shown us at the pastor’s business and demanded a job.
When Lawrence County Deputies went to the man’s home to check on him, he accused them of working with church members to attempt to kill him. He cussed out the deputies and threatened his caseworkers and the officers. Officers noted he had several knives in his home.
Deputies advised the pastor to file for a protection order and passed information about the man’s erratic behavior onto the prosecutor.
The next day, the man’s neighbor called 9-1-1 after he told him he was going to die and came out of his home with a knife and a hammer. He pointed the knife at multiple neighbors and said he intended to kill him. Five witnesses reported death threats from the troubled man.
Officers took him into custody on five counts of menacing and making terroristic threats and transported him to the Lawrence County Jail.
However, they did not keep him at the jail for long. The following day officers were back at his Chesapeake apartment building after he screamed at neighbors and called 9-1-1 to say he had wired everything within a block radius of his apartment to blow up. Neighbors said he was also threatening them with knives again.
The man barricaded himself inside his apartment and refused to answer the door. Officers contacted the fire department to help them get into the ventilation shafts so they could flush the man out with pepper spray. However, he’d already blocked the vents into his apartment with towels and blankets.
The man eventually agreed to come out. Officers found no explosives in the building and took the man back into custody for making terroristic threats.
