Lexington County Sheriff Jay Koon held a news conference Wednesday where he reported that a barricaded man died in a shootout after an eight-hour, gunfire-filled, standoff with law enforcement.

The incident took place on Montclair Circle off of Delree Street in West Columbia, Wednesday morning.

Koon said the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department first received a complaint on June 8, regarding a 29-year-old man. The man pointed a gun at neighbors in the road. according to the complaint.

That incident resulted in two warrants against the man for pointing and presenting a firearm at a person.

“During our course of the investigation on the suspect, it became clear it was an unusual situation in the sense that we found out something recently changed in his life that started him acting irrationally,” Koon said. “He was seen quite often carrying a long gun around the yard out to the mailbox, which is in and of itself not illegal, but obviously a little different in a residential neighborhood.”

Deputies attempted to take the man into custody away from his guns, but they were not successful, so a tactical team was sent to the man’s home around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday to execute the arrest warrants.

Deputies engaged with the suspect verbally and he started shooting from inside the home. At one point, the suspect opened the door and started shooting at law enforcement robots and then pointed his gun at officers. Officers returned fire and hit the suspect in the lower jaw, said Koon.

The stand-off lasted for several hours. When communications ended, Koon said a robot was sent into the bathroom where the man was barricaded. There, he was found “incapacitated.”

EMS and the coroner were on scene, where the suspect was pronounced dead.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) was asked by Koon to conduct an investigation into officer involved shooting part of the case. That is sheriff’s department policy.