BY Sarah Crane, The Associated Press via The New Glasgow News
WEST RIVER STATION, N.S. (CP) -- Negotiators were attempting to convince a woman to put down her firearm and come out of a Nova Scotia house on Friday, after she spent the day in an armed standoff with police.
The standoff between a woman, believed to be in her twenties, and the RCMP began at around 3 a.m. in West River Station, near New Glasgow, N.S., and was still in progress at dusk.
A police spokesperson said the woman was alone in the house and negotiatiors from the RCMP’s Emergency Response Team had been in verbal contact with the woman.
The standoff caused a stir in the normally quiet hamlet, as residents observed camouflaged RCMP walking around in their backyards and snipers hiding in the woods.
RCMP told locals to stay inside their houses until the situation was resolved.
Lesley Ehler lives next door to the house where the woman was barricaded, but said in an interview she didn’t know anything was happening until a neighbour called and told her police were outside.
Soon after, around 8 a.m., she said an RCMP officer knocked on the door as her children were putting on their boots and told them they’d have to stay inside.
She said she was told shots had been fired from the house at police overnight and it would be too dangerous to go outside.
One man, who asked not to be identified, complained that residents were not informed about what was happening soon enough. He said people should have been notified before men with guns started running through their backyards.
At nearby Salt Springs elementary school, where several children were absent because they couldn’t leave their homes in the morning, administration locked the doors to the school as an extra safeguard.