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In the morning of September 4, 2009, two men armed with a hand gun robbed the Bank of America in Manteca and got away with a duffle bag of money. But only two blocks away from the bank, they got cornered by two motorcycle officers. The robbers then barricaded themselves in a house in a residential neighborhood.
The special thing about that house: it it right across the street from our own house and for the rest of the day we had a front row seat for the following twelve-hour standoff, involving 45 police officers , a SWAT team, 5 different county, state and federal agencies, 17 canisters of teargas, a dog and our camera.
We have attached a detailed newspaper article on the standoff in the picture gallery.
Here is our own report: With one exception, we took all the pictures by ourselves from a safe location with a really good zoom lens. (Kids, don't try this at home!)
11:00 AM Police arrives at the scene
12:00 The bomb squad uses a remote controlled vehicle for recognizance.
1:00 PM S.W.A.T. gets in position
3:00 PM After negotiation failed, the first of many teargas canisters are deployed.
3:30 PM The first suspect is smoked out and arrested.
4:00 PM The second, armed suspect still remains inside, even after the deployment of more tear gas. Since the situation seemed to become more dangerous, we retreated to a safer position behind the police roadblocks. The standoff continued until almost midnight.
11;30 PM Finally, the second suspect was apprehended - chased out of the house by a courageous dog named "Gage" (picture curtesy of Manteca Bulletin). At midnight, we were allowed back into the street. The scene was a mess, but at least nobody was hurt and justice was served.
We want to use this waymark to thank the Manteca Police Department and all involved agencies for keeping our neighborhood safe!
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