EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WEHT)- An Evansville Police officer is on leave and one person is dead after a 7-hour long standoff on Monday. Police identified the suspect as Gary Youngblood. He was shot by officers and died at the scene. We’re told his mother was in the home and made it out safely.
Vanderburgh County Sheriff Noah Robinson says the standoff started when deputies and the US Marshall’s Fugitive Task Force tried to serve a felony drug warrant at a home along Missouri Street near Heidelbach Avenue.
“Mr. Youngblood yelled from the residence ‘I am not going back to prison’ and that he was not going to be taken alive. I am paraphrasing there, then he brandished a firearm,” says Noah Robinson, the Vanderburgh County Sheriff.
Robinson says Youngblood refused to come out and threatened deputies. Body cam video shows him with a gun in a window. Police say the gun looked like a handgun, but was actually an airsoft gun. Police also say Youngblood ‘livestreamed’ himself on Facebook.
“He said that he was turning the gas in the residence on. There was a concern that he was going to blow it up or burn it down,” says EPD Sgt. Anna Gray.
Officers talked with Youngblood for over seven hours, trying to get him to come out safely.
“We were making progress, but just as we thought progress was occurring, we were dealt with reversals and Mr. Youngblood remained in the residence and disobeyed commands to surrender,” Sheriff Robinson says.
Police say Youngblood later climbed through a second story window onto a balcony. Sheriff Robinson says Youngblood threatened them with the gun again.
“It is not the outcome we were wanting, ending in the death of Gary Youngblood Jr,” says Sheriff Robinson.
The EPD officers involved in the shooting were given three days off, which is normal protocol for officers involved in a shooting or critical incident.