A Los Angeles Police Department SWAT team on Thursday morning used tear gas to capture a suspected burglar who barricaded himself inside the garage of a Pacoima home for five hours, cops said.
The drama unfolded around 2:40 a.m. Thursday morning when the police received a call of a burglar who had broken into a home near Piney Street and Ralston Avenue in the San Fernando neighborhood, an LAPD spokesman said.
Police found the suspect had fled the home where he’d been initially spotted, but had subsequently broken into a neighboring home, where he barricaded himself inside a garage.
Cops said the suspect is a man in his 30’s who is known to residents of the neighborhood and has been in trouble there before.
Officers removed two terrified residents from the home where the man had broken in an barricaded himself.
Neither of the residents were injured.
The suspect still refused to comply with orders from officers to exit the garage, so a SWAT team was summoned, prompting a road closure and a massive law enforcement and emergency response to the quiet residential neighborhood.
But the ordeal progressed as the suspect still refused to exit the garage for several hours, police said, even as SWAT officers instructed him to surrender.
Fearing the man could hurt himself or someone else, SWAT officers fired gas cannisters into the garage to drive the man out, police said.
Surrounded by choking gas, the suspect finally left the garage around 7:45 am.
He was taken to a local hospital and treated for minor injuries. Police were still determining the charges he would face.
A small fire that had started in the garage amid the standoff was extinguished by the Los Angele Fire Department.