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A woman in Texas sat in the middle of a highway on a lawn chair while armed with a gun and threatening to shoot herself, in a shocking incident that shut down the interstate and prompted a police standoff.
The hours-long event occurred on Interstate 45 in the Spring area north of Houston after the woman was involved in a car accident, according to ABC News. The 64-year-old eventually surrendered to police and no one was hurt.
The incident began when the woman allegedly intentionally crashed her car into the back of a semi-truck in the southbound lanes of the interstate.
No one was hurt in the crash, according to Major Cedrick Collier of the Harris County Sheriff's Office
The woman then reportedly got out her chair and her gun and began sitting in the roadway, prompting emergency crews to shut down the north and southbound lanes of the highway.
"The suspect refuses to comply with verbal commands and is refusing to drop the weapon," a member of Harris County Constable Precinct 4 reported while the incident was ongoing.
The woman involved in the standoff reportedly has a history of mental illness. She sat in a lawn chair with a revolver in her hand. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said the woman kept pointing the gun at her own head.
"She persistently kept it to her face, her throat, her head, therefore making it very difficult for us to approach her and take the gun away," he said at the press briefing.
He said the woman was expressing suicidal thoughts while she was sitting in the chair.
"It was a very delicate situation throughout the whole ordeal," he said. "She has some mental illnesses that she’s dealing with so there’s no rationality as far as what’s taken place. There is some history of psychosis, so that’s to be determined."
Law enforcement crisis negotiators were brought to the scene to talk to the woman and eventually her daughter was brought as well.
"We allowed her to speak to her daughter to let her know her daughter was safe," the sheriff said. "That was something that kept her here with us from doing something foolish. Once she realized her daughter was here, she was safe, she was going to be allowed to see her again, it got better at that point,"
He noted that the woman in the chair was "in-and-out" during the incident.
The standoff ended peacefully when the woman surrendered to the deputies.
"We saved a life," Collier said during a press conference on Thursday. "The good thing is someone's mother and grandmother is coming home tonight."
