Woman Arrested In Fort Collins Standoff Was Wanted On Felony Warrants
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (CBS4) - Police in Fort Collins say a SWAT situation involving a 34-year-old woman with a weapon is over.
Police said they responded to the K-Mart parking lot at the intersection of East Drake Road and South College Avenue at 10:15 a.m. on an emergency call about a hit and run. Investigators said they were initially checking into whether the woman intentionally rammed her vehicle into three different parked vehicles in the parking lot.
Fort Collins police spokesman Sgt. Dean Cunningham said the woman, Pauline Amaniera, 34, refused to come out of her vehicle, a white Nissan pick up truck. When an officer approached, he found her inside the driver's seat with what looked like a handgun to her head. Officers backed off and set up a perimeter, telling nearby store employees to go into lockdown and keeping people away from the parking lot.
A SWAT team joined other officers in trying to convince Amaniera to get out of the truck.
"She had a weapon. She was barricaded inside her car and we were trying to safely take her into custody," Cunningham said.
The scene snarled traffic along one of Fort Collin's busiest corridors. A stretch of College Avenue between Drake and Columbia Road was shut down, and businesses in the area were evacuated during the police activity. Connie Ternasky was inside K-Mart for more than two and half hours.
"They told everyone to keep away from the windows and stuff like that," Ternasky said, "It was nerve-racking. I'm shaking."
Ternasky says she and other shoppers paced the store's aisles for hours. Drivers were forced to snake along the shopping center's back alley, away from the police line of fire.
After more than three hours, police decided to deploy a chemical agent to try to induce Amaniera out of her truck. The deployed a form of gas, Sgt. Cunningham said, outside the truck, but Amaniera remained. Police then launched a gas canister through the pick up truck's back window. Amaniera dropped her weapon and stepped out of the truck, at which point officers took her into custody.
"Negotiations were ongoing throughout the incident," Cunningham said, adding later, "but because this is a criminal investigation at some point we have to take control of the situation."
Police said Amaniera was wanted on suspicion of DUI, plus several felony warrants including failure to comply, failure to appear for cruelty to a child and failure to comply with bond conditions.
Amaniera was taken to the hospital as a precaution before being booked into the Larimer County Jail.
After taking Amaniera into custody, police determined the weapon she had been holding to her head was an air soft replica of a Glock handgun.
Employees at Car Toys, which is located in the same shopping center where the woman barricaded herself, say Amaniera started the incident by ramming her truck into three cars outside their store, one of which belonged to her boyfriend, an employee there.
In addition to the outstanding warrants, Amaniera tentatively faces charges of criminal mischief and domestic violence for Monday's incident.
Lauren DiSpirito is CBS4's Northern Newsroom reporter. Follow her on Twitter @CBS4Lauren. Share your story ideas with her here.
