The standoff began around 10:30 a.m. when the man fled from deputies, who had been looking for him, Judd said, adding that he was a fugitive who rejected a plea deal on child pornography charges in Jacksonville and told his attorney he wasn’t going to prison.
After a five-hour standoff between an armed child pornography suspect and Polk County sheriff’s negotiators.
The incident happened near the Christina Animal Hospital just south of Lakeland and ended on Tuesday afternoon when the suspect fatally shot himself with a handgun.
PCSO Deputies and SWAT team members attempted to negotiate with the man, who was barricaded in a locked car near the veterinary clinic at 6800 N. Church Avenue, on the Lakeland-Mulberry line off Highway 37.
“We negotiated with him for about four hours before he shot himself, despite our hostage negotiators’ work,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said. ” He never threatened us.”
“We performed emergency, life-saving measures, but his wound was too severe to survive,” Judd said.
An ambulance left the animal clinic at 3:30 and headed north. Judd said the man died on the way to the hospital.
The chase began in Mulberry. For unknown reasons, the man fled north on Highway 37 and then turned west into the parking lot of Christina Animal Hospital. He continued down an unpaved access road on the east side of a set of railroad tracks behind the hospital.
Law enforcement vehicles surrounded him as he sat in his car with the air-conditioner running. Temperatures on Tuesday reached at least 100 degrees at the scene. Judd said they were trying to determine if the car had Onstar so they could turn it off as a way to force him out.
“We’ve got him blocked in where he can’t leave and is not a threat to the public,” Judd said.
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