JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) — A 43-year-old man was back in custody after fleeing a court hearing in Bay St. Louis to Jackson where he barricaded himself in a house before giving himself up to police.
WAPT-TVÂ reports Assistant Police Chief Lee Vance said Melvin Patrick Mason surrendered Thursday after a lengthy standoff with police.
Mason had been out of jail on bond since his arrest on a fugitive warrant on child sex-crime charges in May 2012. He was scheduled Monday for arraignment in Hancock County Circuit Court on 10 counts of touching of a child for lustful purposes and three counts of sexual battery.
He fled the courthouse after a judge ordered him to take a drug test.
The Clarion-Ledger reports Mason turned himself over to authorities after a five-hour standoff with authorities.
Vance said the Violent Crimes Task Force received information that Mason was in the area around 1:30 p.m. Thursday. They found him at a home where his girlfriend and another woman lived. When they approached him, he barricaded himself inside the house.
People were evacuated from several nearby homes as the standoff went on. The FBI’s Hostage Negotiation Team spoke with Mason and convinced him to release a woman who was in the house with him, but he refused to come out.
After several hours of negotiations, Vance said, authorities decided to send in the SWAT team to extract him.
“It was decided that the negotiations, so to speak, had reached a dead end, and we activated the Jackson/Hinds SWAT team,” Vance said. “They went to the house where he was and shortly thereafter took him into custody.”
Mason was armed, Vance said, which made the extraction a dangerous situation, but SWAT team members were able to get him out of the home with no incident.
Mason will be held in Jackson on the Hancock County warrant for the sex crimes until he can be sent back to the coast, Vance said.
