A man barricaded himself in a bathroom at an Anaheim apartment on Sunday night, Sept. 12, and was found unresponsive by officers before dying at a hospital, an official said.
The standoff in the 2600 block of West Lincoln Avenue lasted about five hours. It began when a 911 caller reported an explosion in a room of an apartment just after 6 p.m. Sunday, Anaheim police Sgt. Shane Carringer said.
The apartment’s interior was found by officers to be “disheveled” due to the apparent explosion, Carringer said. Its front windows appeared shattered in footage captured at the scene by OnScene TV.
A witness told firefighters there was a man armed with a knife inside, Carringer said. Officers learned he was barricaded in the bathroom. He was a resident of the apartment who was identified by police Monday as 31-year-old Larry Carter.
Negotiators attempted to convince him to surrender, said an Anaheim Police news release. At some point SWAT officers used “chemical agents” in an attempt to coax him out.
The man stopped communicating with police at 10:56 p.m., Carringer said. Officers determined that he needed medical aid, and forced their way into the bathroom at 11:02 p.m. He was unresponsive when paramedics took him to a hospital, where he later died.
Information on what may have caused Carter’s death was not immediately released. An autopsy was planned.
A knife was recovered at the scene, police said.
Anaheim police are investigating Carter’s death as an in-custody death. The Orange County District Attorney’s office, which typically looks into such matters, was not conducting its own review because the man was not technically under arrest when he died, Carringer said.
No shots were fired and no one else was injured in Sunday’s incident. The cause of the reported explosion in the apartment remained under investigation as of Monday evening.