The subject of an early Monday morning SWAT standoff at a DeKalb County motel is now in police custody after five hours of attempts to coax the man out of a room.
The standoff ended around 8 a.m. at the Knights Inn in the 2900 block of Lawrenceville Highway, where authorities had evacuated motel guests and closed a major artery to I-285. No one was injured in the process, according to police.
DeKalb police spokeswoman Shiera Campbell said the standoff started after an attempted robbery at a nearby 24-hour Waffle House.
“We have a robbery suspect who, around 3 a.m., had robbed the Waffle House at Lawrenceville Highway and Montreal Road,” Campbell told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Police officers arrived and he fled across the street to the Knights Inn motel on Lawrenceville Highway.”
The alleged robber has not been identified.
It was not known if the man was armed, Campbell said. After attempts to negotiate with him failed, officers deployed gas agents.
“He was not hurt,” she said. “We were able to gain access to the room. We did use gas to try to get him to leave the room, but he was in the bathroom.”
Another man is also in police custody, and Campbell said investigators were speaking with a woman who may be associated with them.
The intersection was blocked outside I-285 during the standoff. All lanes of Lawrenceville Highway reopened around 8:30 a.m., shortly after police activity cleared.
It was then that evacuated guests could return to their rooms. The displaced families stood across the street for hours, some wrapped in towels and bed sheets and others without their shoes, Channel 2 Action News reported.
One guest, Sherica Williams, told the news station she and her children awoke to police officers in tactical gear knocking on their door.
“My kids are out here with towels and stuff on,” Williams said. “I'm just in shock right now.”
—Please return to AJC.com for updates.
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