The Associated Press
PENN. STATE — A 19-year-old man shot and killed himself Sunday inside a Penn State University apartment, ending an eight-hour standoff with police, the school said.
The man barricaded himself inside one of the apartment’s four bedrooms, university spokesman Bill Mahon said. University police, and then state police, were negotiating with him from the kitchen, he said.
The suspect, who was not a student, was visiting his sister who lived in the apartment and attended Penn State, Mahon said.
Just before 9 a.m. Sunday, state police negotiators “felt their negotiations were going badly and thought that he was going to harm himself,” Mahon said. “They made a decision to try to enter the
bedroom and get the gun from him.”
Tear gas and percussion grenades were fired into the room, but the man did not come out, said Mahon. After several minutes, police used more tear gas, then went into the bedroom and discovered the man had shot himself, Mahon said.
The school said the shooting capped a series of events that apparently started late Saturday night after an altercation at a bar.
Police were called to the second-story apartment shortly before 1 a.m. after neighbors reported a man with a handgun, Mahon said.
Authorities arrived at the apartment, pulled out the sister and evacuated five nearby buildings.