Man in custody after hours-long standoff with SWAT officers

An hours-long standoff ended Friday when Los Angeles police arrested an armed, distraught man who had barricaded himself inside a Winnetka disabled veterans’ hall and threatened to kill himself, authorities said.

The man, who had not yet been identified by authorities, was distraught over a romantic relationship, said Sgt. Barry Montgomery of the Los Angeles Police Department. Police took him into custody around 3 p.m. without firing a shot after multiple attempts to force him from the building.

There were no hostages, and no one was hurt during the arrest, authorities said.

Helicopters, a SWAT team and several police officers responded to a call around 7:30 a.m. of a barricaded, armed man on the 6500 block of Corbin Avenue in Winnetka. The surrounding neighborhood was evacuated and parts of Corbin Avenue were shut down for much of the day, authorities said.

Authorities believe the man was armed with a shotgun, and officers negotiated for about five hours before firing gas canisters through the windows of the veterans’ hall. Though he spoke with police on multiple occasions at the front of the building, he refused to give himself up, even heaving a gas canister back through the window at one point, according to City News Service.

The man was not a veteran, Montgomery said, but had worked in an unspecified branch of the military for six months.

At the start of the standoff, a man who answered the phone at the veterans’ hall identified himself as Jake Zimmerman and told The Times he was there to “make amends.”

“I’ll probably be dead when this comes out,” the man told The Times. “I don’t plan on giving myself up. I don’t plan on shooting any police either.”

The man described himself as a military veteran and claimed the commander of the veterans’ hall mistreated a staff member and stole money from the center. He accused someone at the hall of shooting at him Friday morning.

Police, however, said there were no reports of shots fired, and they could not verify the man’s other claims.

The hall was originally described as being in Woodland Hills, but The Times’ Mapping L.A. database shows the address in Winnetka.

frank.shyong@latimes.com
Twitter: @frankshyong