Police Capture Woman After 5-Week Siege in Home

An apparently deranged woman who held police at bay for more than five weeks was captured Thursday when she ventured outside her home and officers shot her with rubber bullets.

Shirley Allen, 51, was hit at least twice while standing on her back deck, but she wasn’t injured, state police said.

Appearing thinner but otherwise physically OK, Allen was feisty enough to scold troopers for their tactics earlier in the standoff, which right-wingers had dubbed “Roby Ridge.”

Before being taken to a Springfield hospital, Allen spent nearly an hour talking to officers and relatives.

Her stepdaughter, Kate Waddell, said Allen wasn’t “fully rational.”

The standoff in this small central Illinois town began Sept. 22 when Allen brandished a shotgun as her brother and sheriff’s deputies tried to take her in for a court-ordered evaluation.

Allen’s relatives said they had requested the exam because the retired nurse was depressed and paranoid after her husband died of pancreatic cancer in 1989, and her condition had gotten worse recently. She was even refusing to see or talk to her mother and brother.

The standoff became a rallying point for those who compared it to Ruby Ridge--where two members of a family and a federal agent died--as an example of overzealous law enforcement. Others questioned the cost of the standoff--more than $20,000 a day, police said.

Allen fired several shots during the standoff, but a wounded police dog was the only casualty.

Over the weeks, police had tried to get her out of the farmhouse with tear gas, pepper spray and Barry Manilow music, along with a visit from a favorite stepdaughter.

She had fought off the tear gas by smearing her face with petroleum jelly and withstood bean bag bullets by wearing heavy layers of clothing.