6-hour Palolo standoff ends with gunman’s surrender; no one hurt

A more than six-hour standoff with police reportedly involving a man with a gun in a quad home in Palolo early Sunday ended with the man’s surrender, neighbors and news reports said.

About 15 police cars, 15 SWAT team members and at least three snipers converged on the second-story public-housing unit on New Jersey Avenue after an altercation started around 2 a.m., residents say.

A spotlight was placed on the unit, and police in a truck with a loudspeaker attempted to talk the man out of the dwelling, according to neighbors who did not want to be identified.

Several of the two-story quad buildings were evacuated by police. The American Red Cross opened a shelter at Palolo Valley District Park for the evacuees.

A group of 15 to 20 residents gathered at Jarrett Middle School and in the park gymnasium.

One woman said she was awakened at about 2:30 a.m.

“I was asleep and I heard men’s voices out here, and I thought, ‘What’s going on?’” she said. “Then they were pounding on the door — ‘Evacuate! Evacuate!’ I thought it was a fire.”

She and others went up the street at first and then moved to the bus stop across Palolo Avenue.

“They asked us to go back farther down. They said, ‘Gun involved,’” she said.

Police took the man into custody at 9:09 a.m.

Neighbors said the man lives with a woman and several children in the quad unit. A woman inside the unit said she did not want to talk about what happened.

The man, 37, was arrested on suspicion of resisting an order to stop a motorized vehicle, possession of a prohibited weapon and a pair of violations related to firearm registration and storage.