Suspect charged in Columbia standoff

A man arrested after a 50-minute standoff Wednesday in Columbia was in a home with guns and a variety of drugs, according to court documents.

Police arrested Anthony M. Malin, 38, of Columbia, after he surrendered at a residence on Longwell Drive after the SWAT team and crisis negotiators were called on to help convince Malin to leave the home.

Malin was wanted on felony failure to appear warrants for drug distribution and domestic assault out of Taney County, Missouri. Boone County prosecutors charged him Thursday with two counts of illegal gun possession, three counts of drug distribution and one count of stealing a firearm. He was being held in the Boone County Jail on a $50,000 cash-only bond.

Informants and several other people alerted Columbia police to Malin’s whereabouts and told police that Malin was armed and had threatened to use a gun on officers, according to the probable cause statement filed in his case. Malin also had bragged that he was involved in a December double homicide in Moberly that police said was drug related.

Police saw him in a parking lot near Broadway and Stadium Boulevard and followed him to the Longwell Drive residence, where police directed him to come out, the statement said.

Malin told police after his arrest that he had flushed about $7,000 worth of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamine down the toilet and officers found baggies with residue that tested positive for meth, marijuana and cocaine, the statement said. A handgun that had been reported stolen was found in a vehicle outside the residence, police said.

(Editor’s note, 9:30 p.m.: An earlier version of the story identified the suspect arrested as Aaron Malin. The story has been corrected with the right name.)

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