Domestic Dispute Leads to Standoff With SWAT Team

A domestic dispute between a mother and son escalated into a 4 1/2-hour standoff between the son and a Sheriff’s Department SWAT team Saturday morning, officials said.

No one was injured in the incident, which ended when sheriff’s negotiators talked 30-year-old Harold Chaplin Fuller into surrendering.

The confrontation began at 7:15 a.m., when Fuller barricaded himself in his garage after his 72-year-old mother, Inez Fuller, called 911 to report an assault, said Sheriff’s Lt. William Francis.

Francis said the two were apparently arguing in their home in the 23000 block of Plant Avenue over a child custody issue when Harold Fuller hit his mother with a planter box, injuring her slightly, and threatened her with a .22-caliber handgun.

When Fuller went into the garage, his mother locked the door behind him and escaped through a side door, Francis said.

Sheriff’s deputies arrived with a special weapons and tactics team and a hostage negotiation team, Francis said, prompted by threats Fuller made to his mother to kill any officers who tried to arrest him.

Later, a bomb squad was brought in when Fuller told deputies he “had enough explosives to blow up three houses,” Francis said.

The hostage negotiation deputies talked with Fuller by telephone, Francis said. They persuaded him to surrender 4 1/2 hours after the incident began.

They discovered “only some gun powder,” a knife, the handgun and an inoperative .22-caliber rifle, Francis said.

Fuller was being held on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and resisting arrest at County Jail.