Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Whit Johnson reporting Parts of a Salt Lake neighborhood were evacuated this evening because a man threatened to blow himself up. Now the standoff has ended, and police have taken the man into custody.
Police say this is a best-case scenario end to the standoff. SWAT teams deployed tear gas into the home around 5:30 p.m., and Mark Wilt came running out of the home. Police say he was wielding an ax and threatening officers on the scene, and an officer was forced to shoot the man with a rubber bullet. Wilt went down, but police say he got back up again with the ax, and a member of the SWAT team deployed his Taser. At that point, they were able to take Wilt into custody. It wasn't exactly peaceful, but nobody else was hurt.
This all started the at about 2:20 this afternoon when a concerned citizen called police and said Wilt was barricaded in his home at 1100 South and 800 West and had turned on all the gas appliances. The caller said Wilt was threatening to blow himself up, along with the home. Apparently, this had something to do with Wilt being evicted from his home several days earlier.
Now that Wilt has been taken into custody, he faces several charges, among them a terroristic threat and violation of a protective order. Police say they also want to make sure they get him mental health care as quickly as possible because he was threatening suicide.
The people who were evacuated were then allowed back into their homes.
