Members of the Clark County SWAT team were briefly dispatched to Woodland on Friday morning but canceled their response when the report of a gunman turned out to be a man with a pellet rifle.
The call for assistance came just after 11 a.m. when Woodland police responded to a citizen reporting what they thought was a man firing a rifle.
Clark County’s SWAT team and local Washington State Patrol troopers were being mobilized when another call came to stand down. Woodland police determined the man only had a pellet gun which he was using to scare away starlings, Woodland police Sgt. Robb Lipp said.
“It was someone taking care of some bird problems on their property,” he said.
The general area of the incident was the 300 block of North Pekin Road, an industrial street which defines the west boundary of the Cowlitz County town. The man was apparently seen near the BNSF Railway tracks, according to emergency radio traffic monitored at The Columbian.
