Police Detail Thursday Standoff In Middletown

MIDDLETOWN, PA — Police in Middletown Township have released details about a potentially violent standoff that tied up a neighborhood and snarled traffic on Thursday afternoon and evening.

Shortly before 2 p.m. Thursday, officers were called to the 400 block of Hulmeville Road, where it was reported that a man in his 60s had threatened his wife with a gun, then threatened suicide.

Middletown Township Police Capt. Pete Feeney said the wife was able to get away and call 911 from a neighbor's home. Officers set up a perimeter around the home and called the man, who initially responded and started to leave the home, but then went back in and barricaded himself inside, Feeney said.

After several more failed attempts to contact the man and negotiate with him by police, the South Central Emergency Response Team was called to the scene. Feeney said that, after several more hours of trying to contact the man, officers entered the home and arrested him at about 6:45 p.m.

He was taken for a mental health evaluation and criminal charges in the case are pending.

The standoff caused traffic to be shut down in the area between Rt. 413, Old Lincoln Highway and Maple Avenue, in the Langhorne Terrace neighborhood. Students from several Neshaminy School District schools were held at school because buses. Private school routes in the area also were impacted, Neshaminy said.