A man who held part of the Wilderness Rim neighborhood hostage for most of Tuesday has been apprehended. He sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, just before King County Sheriff’s deputies captured him outside a home in the area of 424th Avenue Southwest and Southeast 176th Street.
Roads near the home were closed for much of the day while deputies negotiated with the man, barricaded in a home with a woman, but Sheriff’s spokesperson BJ Myers said at around 8 p.m. that the roads should all be open again within the hour.
The standoff began around 9:30 a.m. when a caller reported a disturbance and said he saw a man with a gun in the home. The woman with him appeared to be a hostage. Sheriff’s deputies responded and the Snoqualmie Police Department was called briefly for backup until enough deputies were on-site. The sheriff’s tactical, or SWAT team, and negotiators were also on site.
Snoqualmie Valley School District officials kept students from the Wilderness Rim neighborhood in North Bend on school grounds at Opstad Elementary, Twin Falls Middle School, Mount Si High School and the freshman campus, and Two Rivers School, until all parents could be contacted to pick up the students.
“We just followed police direction,” said school district spokesperson Carolyn Malcolm, adding that it required some bus route changes to avoid the affected roads. About 50 students were sheltered in place, Malcolm said, but by 4:30 p.m., all of them had been picked up.
Deputies secured the home in the morning and evacuated one neighboring house. At 12:45 p.m., Myers posted only that there was no change at the home, and negotiators were still talking with the people inside, “working on a peaceful resolution.”
“They are in some kind of distress and we’re trying to calm them down and get them out of the house,” he told the Record in a phone call that afternoon.
Shortly before 4 p.m., he reported that the woman was safely out of the house but the man was still inside, talking to negotiators.
The standoff continued until early evening, when Myers posted “Male sustained a self inflicted gunshot wound to the chest just before being captured outside.”
He said the injury was not life-threatening.
