St. Paul Park man shot after all-night standoff, firefight with police

Washington County

The Washington County SWAT team joined the firefight at 3 a.m.

​Police shot a man holed up in his house on Summit Ave. in St Paul Park this morning, ending a stand-off that had lasted through the night.

St. Paul Park police were originally dispatched to the railroad tracks near Pullman Ave. and 9th Ave., in search of a man described as "suicidal." They found the man around 1 a.m., and he escaped into a house -- his parents' house, according to neighbors.

At around 6 a.m., the man was shot, though police couldn't confirm whether they fired the shot or it was self-inflicted. The man was taken to Regions Hospital, and police could not confirm his condition.

No officers were injured in the shootout. Other people were inside the house at the time of the shooting, and also were unharmed.

The scene quickly escalated from a routine check-up on an endangered person to a situation that endangered nearly everyone.

From inside the house, the man fired on St. Paul Park Police, who called in a Washington County SWAT team for backup just before 3:00 a.m. As the standoff continued, people in the neighborhood got a call from police telling them to stay away from windows and seek shelter in the basement.

Martin Schwartz, a pastor at the nearby St. Andrew's Lutheran Church who lives down the block from the incident, said he and another neighbor thought they'd heard 20 or more shots fired.

Schwartz said he didn't know the family that lived inside. Neighbors who lived closer said they also didn't know the family, but thought the man involved in the shooting was the son of the family inside. 

The shootout took place on the 1000 block of Summit Ave. in St. Paul Park.

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