Standoff in Gallup
Man armed with pistol confronts police

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Philip Stake
Staff writer

GALLUP — A man armed with a .45-caliber handgun challenged police to shoot him during a standoff on Linda Vista Road that lasted four hours Wednesday night.

Alexander James, 27, of 101 Linda Vista Drive, holed up inside the house he shares with his family Wednesday at about 6 p.m., after his family had alerted police that he was threatening suicide and put the pistol to his head, according to Gallup Police Lt. Rick White.

White said officers negotiated with James using a bullhorn, and that on several occasions James came out of the house and invited gunfire. The family was waiting with police outside.

After a few hours of a tense negotiating, James fired one round, by accident, and quickly alerted police to his mistake.

“He yelled out that it was an accident,” White said.

James surrendered around 11 p.m. and was taken to Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital for a mental evaluation before being booked at McKinley County Adult Detention Center on charges of felony possession of a firearm and negligent use of a firearm.

A neighbor who came home about 7 p.m. was surprised by the nervous scene on her ordinarily quiet street.

“A cop was standing in my driveway,” Marla Shephard, who lives several houses down and across the street, said. “I asked him: ‘You’re standing in front of my house. Is there anything I should know?’

But police said they couldn’t say anything, which made Shephard all the more nervous.

“It was scary in a way because they can’t tell you a whole lot, and I understand that. But they can tell you something,” she said.

Shephard’s house is situated in such a way that the front faces James’s house, and, wary of errant fire, she decided to keep to the back of the house. She said she busied herself in the office and called her children to tell them not to come home. She peeked through the windows from time to time and overheard pieces of the negotiation; but only pieces.

“They kept telling (James) to come out and put the gun down ... There was a lot of commotion several times and then it would calm down again and their voices were soft ... I heard (James) yell at one point ‘I want to talk to my family now!’”

Once darkness fell, Shephard’s sensor-controlled yard light flashed on and pretty soon an officer came to the door and asked that it be turned off. Then he left again and Shephard went back to quietly waiting.

“It was really weird, nerve-wracking, because you just don’t know what’s going on ... I didn’t know anything and everybody was texting and calling and my kids couldn’t come home, and I couldn’t leave.”

Eventually, around 11 p.m., she ventured out the front door. The cruiser that had been parked in front of her driveway was gone. Inching forward into the yard, she noticed the yellow tape that had been stretched between her neighbor’s house and a tree across the street, was gone.

“I called my son and told him he could come home,” she said.