Nov. 12--OGDEN -- Police weren't saying Sunday night whether a man involved in a shootout during a standoff earlier in the day was killed by Ogden officers or took his own life.
The identity of the man involved in the deadly siege at a home at 180 4th St. also wasn't released.
Ogden Police Lt. Danielle Croyle, who is in charge of the department's major crimes division, could not be reached for comment.
A Standard-Examiner reporter went to the house Sunday night, but no one answered the door. In addition, neighbors said they didn't know the names of the people who live there.
At 2:23 a.m. Sunday the Weber Consolidated Dispatch Center received a 911 call from a female requesting assistance because of a domestic violence incident at the home, according to a news release from Ogden police.
"It (a domestic violence incident) is one of those calls that officers handle maybe hundreds or thousands of times a year," Ogden Police Lt. Chad Ledford said. "You never know what is going to happen when you get a call."
Police made contact with individuals in the home and, while investigating, were fired upon inside the residence. Officers returned fire and made a tactical retreat from the home, the news release says. In addition, the officers were able to safely remove occupants from the home.
A male suspect barricaded himself inside the home and refused to come out, according to the news release.
Ogden-Metro SWAT officers responded to the house. After negotiations with the man ceased, police entered the house and found the man dead, the news release states.
An investigation into the incident is ongoing. The officers involved in the incident have been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an independent investigation by the Weber County Attorney's Office. Jaidee Johnson, who lives at 210 4th St., two houses away from the residence where the standoff occurred, said she watched the incident unfold. She was alerted to the standoff by her 18-year-old son, who phoned her after he was blocked from returning home around 3 a.m. Sunday by police, who had cordoned off the neighborhood.
She went out to her driveway and was met by three SWAT officers.
"They said, 'Ma'am, we might be making some noise and you may want to go back into your house where it is safe and warm,' " she told the Standard-Examiner.
Several SWAT officers then cut a hole in a barbed wire fence in her backyard so they could get access to a field behind the house where the standoff was taking place.
At one point during the siege, Johnson said, she first heard eight to 10 gunshots, followed by as many as five more shots, and then heard SWAT officers yell, "Go, go, go!"
"There was quite a bit of gunfire this morning," she said Sunday night during an interview at her home.
Johnson said police vehicles lined both sides of 4th Street from Grant Avenue to Pingree Avenue. By 7:30 a.m. Sunday the standoff was over, and police finally left the house around 2:30 p.m.
Johnson said she never worried about her safety because of the large police presence in her neighborhood during the incident.
"It was kind of cool to watch," she said. "They knew the suspect was shooting at them, and (they) didn't blink and entered to make sure those in the neighborhood were safe and secure."
Copyright 2012 - Standard-Examiner, Ogden, Utah
