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<< Previous   of   Next >> Dan Bates / The Herald  (click to enlarge) A SWAT member fires rubber bullets Tuesday through the window of a Marysville apartment with a suspect holed up inside, armed with a knife and a hammer. (click to enlarge) The suspect sticks his head out the apartment window.   ADVERTISEMENT   CONTACT THE HERALD Robert Frank, City Editor frank@heraldnet.com   Published: Wednesday, August 13, 2008 Marysville standoff ends in arrest Man with knife barricades himself in Marysville apartment By Jackson Holtz, Herald Writer MARYSVILLE -- A police SWAT team reached a Marysville man's second-story apartment window in the bucket of a utility truck Tuesday afternoon. About 6:15 p.m., they shattered the window and fired a couple of rubber bullets at the man before arresting him and ending a nearly four-hour standoff. The incident began about 2 p.m. when the man, described as a 52-year-old Polish immigrant, knocked at a neighbor's door at the Ebey Arms Apartments, in the 900 block of Columbia Avenue, Marysville Police Cmdr. Ralph Krusey said. The man forced his way into the apartment of a neighbor, a woman in her 60s, and threatened her with a hammer, Krusey said. "He yelled at the woman and frightened her terribly," he said. The man shouted something, believed to be in Polish, and left. Police were called and the man refused to give himself up. Officers saw that he was armed with a knife and the hammer. The man then barricaded himself in his apartment, Krusey said. Officers evacuated the apartment building, and Marysville police called in the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office SWAT team. Dozens of police officers dressed in camouflage uniforms and wearing helmets surrounded the building, which is next to the Marysville Post Office. Police brought in midnight-black armored vehicles. "It's kind of crazy," said William Soplata, 35, who lives below the man in the apartment building. Soplata was forced to wait about a block away as police tried to negotiate with the man. Neighbors, including several children on bicycles and skateboards, watched as police used a camera on a long pole to see what was happening inside the man's apartment. Brian Murril said he walks by the apartment building every day. Murril, an Everett Fire Department paramedic, said this kind of police activity happens everywhere. "Marysville is no different," he said. After more than three hours of waiting, police obtained a search warrant to enter the man's apartment. First they tried to subdue the man using tear gas, Krusey said. Two canisters were pumped in under the man's door. Still, the man refused to give himself up. He blocked the door. That's when police called in the utility truck, put an officer in a bucket and then fired the rubber bullets at the man. That caused the suspect to step away from the door, and the SWAT team rushed into the room and arrested him. The man was treated for minor injuries. No one else was injured. The man was expected to be booked into the Snohomish County for investigation of residential burglary, Krusey said.

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