By Franci Richardson and Laurel J. Sweet, Boston Herald
| The SWAT teams takes aim at the Haverhill apartment housing a Texas fugitive. (Boston Herald photo by Jon Hill) |
A 48-year-old fugitive hiding out in Haverhill - Boston suburb - with a sawed-off shotgun surrendered yesterday after a SWAT team surrounded his house and ordered him via megaphone to pick up his phone, insisting, “We’re not going away.”
Holed up in a Bellevue Avenue apartment, Mark David Matthews came out with his hands up and lay face-down on the ground as rifle-wielding SWAT police officers cuffed him in front of their armored vehicle.
“Once he realized he was outnumbered and outgunned . . . he had no choice but to come out,” Haverhill police Sgt. John P. Arahovites said yesterday.
On Friday evening, Haverhill police received two anonymous tips saying Matthews was an ex-Navy Seal, armed and dangerous, wanted by the FBI. Police believed he had an assortment of guns.
Yesterday, after police found his truck near Bellevue Avenue, they evacuated four people from the three-apartment house before the armored vehicle rolled up.
Richard Stanley, control chief for the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council SWAT team, sent 35 special-ops officers to the scene along with 10 support personnel, including hostage negotiators.
“The negotiators had a conversation with (Matthews). It went very well,” Stanley said. “The gentleman thankfully decided to surrender himself.”
Officers recovered only a shotgun from his apartment.
Matthews was wanted on a warrant issued in September out of his hometown of Spicewood, Texas, for a probation violation of possession of a firearm. He was also wanted for allegedly violating a protective order in August.
“He had been bragging that he wasn’t going back to jail, Arahovites said.
A former foster mother of Matthews’ son, Colin, from Brownwood, Texas, said the father had a violent reputation.
“The child didn’t have good stories,’' Sharron Holland said. “They had police entering their home with guns drawn over drugs.”
She said Matthews was an absentee dad whose parental rights were revoked. He called his son once or twice a year, but attended his high school graduation.