A more-than-three-hour standoff between the Vancouver Police Department and an alleged burglar holed up in an abandoned house ended peacefully shortly after 6 a.m. Friday.
Police tracked a 16-year-old who had allegedly broken into a home near N.E. 93rd Avenue and Mill Plain Boulevard to a vacant house across from Southwest Washington Medical Center.
The SWAT team was called in to communicate with the teen, who surrendered at about 6:15 a.m. Police had been talking with him on a cell phone but opted for a megaphone-like device when the phone’s battery went dead.
“We were able to make contact with the suspect, because there were concerns that he was possibly armed and was going to hurt himself,” said Kim Kapp, a Vancouver Police Department spokeswoman. “He was not hurt. We were not hurt. There were no evacuations.”
Kapp said the teen allegedly fled the scene of an attempted burglary in the 100 block of N.E. 93rd Avenue, and was spotted later in a grass lot near the hospital. Police heard a crash that Kapp said sounded like broken glass, and they followed the sound to an abandoned home at 305 N.E. 92nd Ave.
The teen was taken into custody on suspicion of residential burglary, theft of a firearm and resisting arrest.
Kapp said the victims of the alleged attempted robbery knew the teen, but their relationship is unclear. According to emergency dispatch logs, he was alleged to have stolen a loaded shotgun and a knife.
The police department did not release the suspect’s name because he is a juvenile.
No homes were evacuated. Several of the houses in the area, including the house where the suspect faced off with the SWAT team, are owned by the medical center and kept vacant in preparation for a future expansion, according to online property records and hospital officials.
