LAGRANGE COUNTY, Ind. (WANE) – A standoff involving SWAT units from multiple police agencies at a home in LaGrange on Wednesday ended with no injuries, an empty house and a man on the run.
Police are now looking for Joshua Alan Wilson, who will likely face charges of intimidation with a firearm, invasion of privacy, domestic battery and strangulation.
Wilson somehow slipped out of a home on foot after holding police in a standoff for hours.
A woman called emergency dispatchers early Wednesday morning saying that she was being kept in a closet at a home located at 10395 E. 050 N., according to LaGrange County Sheriff Tracy Harker.
The woman said Wilson was threatening to shoot her and that he also made threats to shoot at police, Harker said. Wilson may have also been suicidal, the woman told investigators, according to a media release from the sheriff’s department.
Officers arrived at the home early in the morning, at about 5 a.m., got the woman out of the home and waited as other agencies were called in to assist.
Harker said he wanted to avoid a repeat of what happened in Kendallville last month, when a man with a rifle began peppering police with shots after barricading himself in an apartment for hours on end.
“I didn’t want to have a situation like that again,” Harker said. “Other counties were notified and we held things down.”
The Auburn City Police SWAT and the Steuben County Sheriff’s SRT teams made the scene, and eventually officers were able to get the woman out of the home. Officers at the scene used a PA system to try to make contact with Wilson inside.
Harker said investigators also used “phone pings” – triangulating the use of a cell phone – to determine that Wilson might have at some point left the home.
Eventually, SWAT officers went into the home and found that it was empty.
“We’re still trying to locate him,” Harker said Wednesday afternoon.
Anyone who knows where Wilson might be is asked to call the sheriff’s department at (260) 463-4791.