Residents describe being told to leave their homes during standoff
By Kolby Terrell
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OKLAHOMA CITY (KOCO) — Residents living in a northwest Oklahoma City neighborhood were pushed back from their homes multiple times during a Tuesday standoff.
Neighbors and onlookers were staged blocks away from a home near Pennsylvania Avenue and Northwest 36th Street, where the Oklahoma City Police Department said an armed man took five people hostage.
The suspect shot an Oklahoma City police officer during the standoff, according to police. He was taken to OU Health, where he underwent surgery.
Multiple people living near the scene said they were very antsy while the situation unfolded. Many of them described the frightening moments when they heard gunshots.
“Probably like 10,” resident Alexis Acy said, describing the number of loud pops she heard.
Police came to doors in the neighborhood, asking residents to sit in police cars for a while.
“Just heard a lot of commotion, so I stepped outside to see some firemen putting on bullet proof vests and then a lot of police and action happening right down the street,” Meagan Keeney, a resident in the area, said.
Eventually, police asked them to move even further away because it wasn’t safe.
“Once I heard a police officer was shot, that’s kind of a worst-case scenario,” Keeney said.
They said it was scary being so close to the gunfire. Shaken up, they said they were happy to get police instructions to step all the way back to the staging area.
“I moved back a couple blocks – a block down – to give the officers space and focus to try to figure out and handle the situation,” neighbor Dominique Gray said. “I just ran a block towards Penn.”
One woman said she was mainly worried about her family while they waited.
“We’re keeping the kids in the house. Other kids are trying to be curious, since they’re saying it’s an active shooter. Bullets don’t have any eyes,” Larhonda Denton, a resident of the area, said. “It’s just kind of scary that something like this happened. We’re just kind of wondering why it happened. What happened?”
After an hours-long standoff, officers shot and killed the man, rescuing the five others inside.
Police did not yet release the names of the officer shot or the suspect killed by police.
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