Chainsaw-Wielding Man Asking To Be Shot Arrested After Hours-Long Standoff

A standoff between Maryland police officers and an unidentified armed man on Sunday was safely resolved after hours of de-escalation, local authorities said.

Officers were responding to a call at around 8:45 p.m. of a person breaking car windows in La Plata, Maryland, when they encountered an unnamed man "wielding a running chainsaw and several large knives," the Charles County Sheriff's Office (CCSO) said in a statement.

The man repeatedly yelled at the officers to shoot him, investigators said.

Police said one of the first responding officers on the scene used the public address system in their police car to "establish rapport with the man and to give verbal commands for the man to drop the weapons."

More officers, including those from the sheriff's Crisis Intervention Team (CIT), arrived and kept engaging the man. Officers from the La Plata Police Department also arrived and set up a perimeter in the surrounding area as a precaution.

The officers continued to de-escalate the situation by negotiating with the man for approximately two hours. Emergency services officers then disarmed the man and took him into custody after finding an opportunity to safely apprehend him.

"The man was transported to a nearby hospital for a mental evaluation," police said.

Police attributed the peaceful resolution to their training. According to the CCSO, it has "been training officers for many years on diffusing dangerous situations and recognizing signs of mental illness."

A partnership between the CCSO, St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office and the Charles County Behavioral Health Authority led to the creation of the CIT.

"The goal of CIT is to advance awareness of mental illness and provide officers with resources to collaboratively address situations involving people in crisis," the CCSO explained in the press release.

"Officers are first introduced to basic crisis intervention and de-escalation in the academy and veteran officers receive training throughout their careers to ensure they are better prepared to mitigate crisis situations when they arise," the sheriff's office said.