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Hours-long standoff ends in arrest at Richmond townhouse

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Tadz Palys was studying in his Richmond, B.C., home when he noticed police cars outside.

“My in-laws had my daughter across the street so I went over to go see her,” he told CTV News. But it then took an hour and a half for him to get back.

“Police escorted us back over here,” he said.

That’s because Mounties had created a large perimeter around his town house complex.

Just after 12 p.m. two bailiffs had gone to a home at Norton Court to enforce a Supreme Court order to remove a man. But when the two bailiffs entered the property, the man allegedly pointed a firearm at them.

Not long after, the bailiffs allege the man went out onto his second storey balcony and fired his gun into the air multiple times.

Richmond RCMP were called, along with the Lower Mainland Emergency Response Team. Mounties quickly shut down the area on Westminster Highway between Gilley Road and McLean Avenue.

“Police escorted us back over here,” Palys said, adding he was told to stay away from windows and doors. 

He listened as officers tried to negotiate with the man barricaded inside his home.

“They were just trying to convince him to come to the patio and put where they can see his hands,” he said. “It sounded like he was trying to make some sort of demands.”

In surveillance video from one of the houses right next door, ERT members could be seen moving through yards, heavily armed, getting into position.

After hours of talking, neighbours heard a loud bang.

“We just heard loud bangs, my daughter was asking me ‘what was that daddy?’” Palys said. “I just grabbed my daughter and ran into the stairwell.”

Patrick Santos, another neighbour, said it sounded like a flash bang.

“I think it was the police trying to make him go out I guess, a flash bang,” he said.

“It was a loud explosion it was like a transformer that blew. It was that loud.”

Surveillance video from a neighbour's home shows, at about 3:45 p.m., the man walking out of his home, with his hands in the air.

“He walked out slowly, he knelt down and he lay flat on the floor. And that’s when they picked him up and took him away,” said Santos.

Police said in a news release the man was safely taken into custody without incident.

Neighbours told CTV News they’d seen police at his house before.

“If there’s any sort of disturbance it’s always in that area in front of his house,” said Santos. “I don’t know him that well, only that he reacts unpredictably.”

No one was injured and Richmond RCMP are still investigating. 

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