Scottsdale barricade situation ends

A two-hour standoff near Scottsdale’s Hohokam Elementary School ended peacefully Monday but not before triggering a tense chain of events that led to the school’s evacuation and the arrest of four suspected burglars.

The incident began about 11:45 a.m. as a reported burglary of a home on the corner of 79th Street and Palm Lane, and quickly escalated to a standoff with police after the suspects fled in a Volkswagen Beetle to a vacant home and barricaded themselves inside.

The standoff ended about 2 p.m., after the Scottsdale Police Department’s SWAT Team shot canisters of chemicals into the home at 8337 E. Cypress Street, near Granite Reef Road, causing three people to surrender. One of the men involved with the group had surrendered about a half-hour earlier, said Scottsdale police officer Dave Pubins.

The four people, two men and two women, were arrested on suspicion of burglary and failing to obey orders, and one of the women was hospitalized for chemical inhalation, Pubins said. Their names were not immediately released.

The group fled the home they were burglarizing after the homeowner returned and confronted them when he noticed his personal belongings, including guns, had been loaded into the Volkswagen, Pubins said.

A woman who lives across the street from the vacant home on Cypress called 911 to alert the police that the suspected burglars were holed up inside, he said.

“The neighbor who saw the car and called 911 greatly increased the success of the operation,” Pubins said. “If it wasn’t for her, we might not have located the suspects as quickly as we did. They stole multiple handguns from the house they burglarized, and we believed they were heavily armed.”

Meanwhile, about 600 students at Hohokam were evacuated to Coronado High School. The students were led out of the school in an area that was not exposed to the barricade situation and led to nearby Coronado, where they awaited pick-up by their parents, according to police and the school district. No students were harmed.

Theresa Dalton, who has lived on Cypress for two years, said she heard loud bangs that sounded like gunshots before she realized the SWAT Team had shot chemicals into the house and stormed the residence.

“It was pretty close, and sounded like it was going through the walls,” Dalton said.

Dalton also said she has seen the four suspects hanging out at the house across the street, and that the neighborhood seemed to change for the worse about six months after she moved in.

“There’s been a lot more traffic than there used to be,” Dalton said. “About eight months ago, the SWAT Team was at another house down the street. It’s time to move. I don’t want to stay in an area like this. This is too much in two years.”

The day especially was stressful for Molly Costantina, a 15-year-resident of Cypress Street, who lives across the street from where the four burglary suspects were arrested and came home to see the street lined with SWAT Team officers.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Costantina, who works at nearby Supai Middle School. “This is a great neighborhood. It’s mostly families of people who went to Coronado and some renters.”

Costantina said she was returning home after just putting her 13-year-old cat to sleep.

“And we were evacuated,” she said. “We went to my parents’ house a couple blocks away. There was one of the SWAT Team officers who stayed in one of our bedrooms.”