By Seth A. McConnell
I spent yesterday afternoon covering the armed standoff at the Corral Motel on East North Street. Covering standoffs is often a waiting game that feels like a game of high stakes chess with long moments of waiting and sudden bursts of action as law enforcement make strategic moves to end things in a hopefully peaceful manner. Yesterday followed this scenario to a T. There were a lot of unknowns as well, the reported weapon and child in the room had not been seen by officers only spoken of by Edward Meyers as he barricaded the door. With these unknowns in mind officers took precautions and made calculated moves as they worked on negotiating with Mr. Meyers. Yesterdays high of 94 degree didn’t help the situation either. With officers in full gear and the sun bearing down, officers traded positions often to take water breaks. I know I was dying from the heat and I was only wearing a t-shirt and sitting behind a large concrete and metal box that I scouted out as a barricade when I got chased away from my original position that was much closer but very dangerous. If Mr. Meyers would have had a gun and had started shooting I very well could have been in the line of fire. So I camped out behind my makeshift barricade that on any given day of the week is traffic light control box and waited. Peeking out and watching the officers movements waiting for something, anything to happen. I made my obligatory shots of officers crouched behind vehicles, walls, bushes, etc. when I first arrived on scene and then just waited and waited in the hot sun for four hours for an image to present itself. Taking a frame or two when a group of officers would move in to relieve another group, hoping that they were actually grouping up to make an assault on the room. Ultimately putting my camera down when it became apparent it was just a relief effort. Finally around 4:30 things really started to pick up. Officers sprayed oleoresin capsicum (OC) gas (a pepper spray style gas) into a vent on the backside of the room and shortly after a group of four officers in gas masks marched around the front of the building threw a canister of OC gas into the room and a few minutes later it was over. Officers appeared with a man, blood smeared across his neck, down his black shirt, on his belly and covering half the white underwear and pants that were unzipped and hanging open, his crimson stained hands cuffed behind his back, clutching the back of his sagging pants. Officers escorted him to an awaiting ambulance for medical attention. I had selected the position I was in for two reasons 1) I had a clear view of the back window on his room with officers just across the alley. If he would have pulled the curtains back on that window I could have easily made a shot of him inside covered in blood (I knew before he came out he was covered in blood from scanner traffic) and officers with their weapons drawn. 2) It was the clearest and closest shot at making an image of officers pulling him out of the building and putting him in a squad car or ambulance which was waiting just down the street. I was hoping they would walk him down the sidewalk towards the ambulance and they did just that. The injuries Mr. Meyers sustained were self inflicted, fortunately there was not a child in the room as he had told officers.
Here are a few more frames that didn’t make it into the paper.
If Mr. Meyers would have appeared in the window this would have been the perfect angle.
