JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. (WDRB) -- A 65-year-old man died Tuesday night after police said he fired shots at officers from an apartment in southern Indiana.
The incident started around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Avia Apartments at 703 North Shore Drive, across from the Sheraton Hotel near the riverfront in downtown Jeffersonville.
Indiana State Police Sgt. Carey Huls said in a news briefing early Wednesday that officers were called to that location when a resident called police for a welfare check on another resident who had been making "disturbing" statements about going back to prison before going back into his apartment.
Huls said the suspect has been identified as 65-year-old Richard D. Glass.
Huls said that before officers arrived, Jeffersonville dispatchers received "a phone call from the suspect involved, in reference to the original phone call, and (the suspect) made some comments about a possible crime, possibly having his phone hacked, and requested police presence."
When officers arrived, Huls said they tried to make contact with the suspect but were unable to despite "multiple phone calls back and forth with the subject through the dispatch center trying to make make contact with him to get an idea of exactly what was going on."
At one point, Huls said the suspect stated "that he did have a firearm and that it was possible that somebody was going to get shot. Jeffersonville PD continued to try to make contact with him but he would not open the door for officers. He made some comments that officers believed it was in the best interest to back away from the door to try to deescalate the situation."
Huls said that's when people from within the building began calling 911 to report shots fired as officers from Jeffersonville Police Department and Indiana State Police were arriving.
"At one point, after the initial phone call of hearing the shots fired from within the apartment, the officers advised that the suspect had shot out the window toward officers themselves that were staged outside," Huls said. "At that time, a regional SWAT team was also called to arrive on scene."
The SWAT team set up in another building in the same complex but in a separate building, where they could see the suspect's window. That's when Huls said they "observed he had at least one and possibly multiple firearms in his possession. They continued the whole time trying to make contact with him to put the weapons down, to come out of the building."
Huls said sometime around 11:30 p.m. "the suspect did again fire out the window, two or three times, out of the apartment building." That's when Huls said a member of the Jeffersonville SWAT team fired a single round, striking the suspect.
Huls said no other shots were fired by police.
"We don't have a lot information as far as exactly where he's from," Huls said. "Obviously, he's lived in this apartment at least until today's date. Before that, we believe he was a resident of Kentucky, at least for some period of time. He did have a Kentucky driver's license, so there are still a lot of questions to be answered."
Huls said no one else was injured during the incident, which could have been a lot worse. "
"There are shots that did go through some of the apartment walls, so we're very, very fortunate nobody in those adjacent apartment buildings, or apartment rooms, were struck," he said.
ISP is handling the investigation.
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