By Greg Jones
The Daily Commercial
EUSTIS, Fla. — A 27-year-old ex-convict, after vowing not to return to prison, shot himself in the head atop a Eustis apartment building after a standoff with law enforcement that shut down all four lanes Bay Street in the downtown area for about five hours Monday afternoon.
Chaston Todd Liming appeared to have shot himself in the head with a handgun at about 3:15 p.m. at 1005 S. Bay St. The Lake County Sheriff’s Office would not officially confirm the extent of the man’s injuries, but some officers at the scene said Liming appeared to be mortally wounded with a gunshot wound to his right temple.
Deputies, accompanied by Eustis police officers, showed up at an apartment on the building’s second floor to serve Liming with a felony violation-of-probation warrant. He reportedly told a neighbor he was not going back to prison again and fled to the roof of a one-story section of the building.
Officers were unable to talk Liming down and said he kept placing a handgun to his head. The sheriff’s office Crisis Negotiations Team was called in but it was unable to get the man to surrender.
Bay Street in Eustis was been shut down, both the northbound and southbound lanes, and motorists were asked to avoid the area if at all possible.
Tanya Miller, 39, of Eustis, who has lived in the area for 13 years and stays a couple of blocks from the Bay Street building, said her vehicle was stopped at a light at Stevens Street and Eustis Street, when she saw Liming “waving” a handgun on top of the roof. She said sheriff’s deputies then told her to back up.
Miller then pulled up into her aunt’s yard, which is a about a block away.
“The officer made me back up, and the officer was still pointing his gun at him (Liming) just in case he fired off at me,” she said.
Liming, who authorities say lives in Clermont, was at the Bay Street building because his girlfriend lives there, Miller said. The 2,265 square-foot building, built in 1957, had retail space on the first floor and apartments on the second floor.
Danny Glover, 54, a Eustis resident, said he was told Liming family is from Germany, and he said the man doesn’t have any family living here.
Bobby Henderson, 42, owner of 352 Powersports on the corner of Grove and Stevens streets, said he began seeing law enforcement officers arrive on the scene about noon.
According to Lake County jail records, Liming had been booked into that facility 18 times — beginning a few months after he turned 18 years old — for a variety of crimes ranging from minor traffic violations to burglary, battery and strong-armed robbery. His most recent arrest last May was for possessing drugs without a prescription and for possessing narcotic equipment.
This latest arrest was only three months after Liming was released from the Columbia Correctional Institution in Lake City, where he served two years and eight months for a burglary and a criminal mischief conviction in Lake County in 2009. He currently was on community sepervision.
Florida Department of Corrections records show the 6-foot, 4-inch, 200-pound Liming also served time in prison in 2007.
Copyright 2013 The Daily Commercial