A woman in Texas sat in the middle of a highway on a lawn chair, armed with a gun and threatening to shoot herself, in a shocking incident that shut down the interstate and sparked a police standoff.
According to ABC News, the woman was involved in a car accident on Interstate 45 in the Spring area north of Houston, which lasted several hours. The 64-year-old eventually surrendered to police, and no one was injured.
The incident began when the woman allegedly intentionally crashed her car into the back of a semi-truck on the interstate’s southbound lanes.
According to Major Cedrick Collier of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, there were no injuries in the crash.
The woman then reportedly pulled out her chair and gun and began sitting in the road, prompting emergency crews to close the north and southbound lanes of the highway.
“The suspect refuses to comply with verbal commands and is refusing to drop the weapon,” a Harris County Constable Precinct 4 officer reported while the incident was ongoing.
The woman involved in the standoff is said to have a history of mental illness. She sat on a lawn chair, a revolver in her hand. According to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, the woman repeatedly pointed the gun at her own head.
“She persistently kept it to her face, her throat, her head, therefore making it very difficult for us to approach her and take the gun away,” he told the press during the briefing.
He stated that the woman was expressing suicidal thoughts while sitting in the chair.
“It was a very delicate situation throughout the whole ordeal,” he told me. “She is dealing with some mental illnesses, so there is no rationale for what has happened. There is a history of psychosis, so that will be determined.”
Law enforcement crisis negotiators were called to the scene to speak with the woman, and her daughter was eventually brought in as well.
“We allowed her to speak to her daughter to let her know her daughter was safe,” said the Sheriff’s Office. “That was something that kept her from acting foolishly. It got better when she realised her daughter was here, she was safe, and she would be able to see her again.
He observed that the woman in the chair was “in-and-out” throughout the incident.
The standoff was resolved peacefully when the woman surrendered to the deputies.
“We saved a life,” Collier stated at a press conference on Thursday. “The good thing is someone’s mother and grandmother is coming home tonight.”
