We all got evacuated from our house for this.
Parolee threatens to blow up Van Nuys apartment before surrendering
BY JASON KANDEL, Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 05/18/2007 07:08:41 AM PDT
VAN NUYS - A 36-year-old parolee holed himself up in his apartment last night and threatened to blow up the building by turning on the gas, forcing the evacuation of 100 neighbors and the shutdown of a stretch of Sepulveda Boulevard, before crisis negotiators talked him into
surrendering, police said. The drama began about 8 last night when police responded to a call of a domestic dispute in the
7300 block of Sepulveda Boulevard. When officers arrived, they said Mark Nevarez barricaded himself inside his apartment, threatened to shoot police and blow up his apartment — at one point even turning on the natural gas on the stove.
“Suddenly the boyfriend barricaded himself in his apartment and he wouldn’t come out,” said Los Angeles Police Lt. Robert Davis, a watch commander at the Van Nuys Division. “He said something about having guns, that he would shoot the officers if they entered. Within the hour this thing kinda started to go downhill. He did threaten to blow the building up by turning on the gas in the apartment. So the gas was shut off for the entire building.”
Police evacuated about 100 residents as a precaution and a stretch of Sepulveda was temporarily shut down. No one else was inside the suspect’s apartment at the time.
Officers from the elite Metro unit were called in and over six hours negotiated his surrender. After six hours, crisis negotiators were able to talk him out and the incident ended peacefully at 2:30 a.m., police said. He was booked into the Los Angeles County Jail for violating parole. Details of his criminal history were not immediately available. Nevarez is on parole and has a long list of felony convictions, Davis said.
The evacuated residents were able to return to their apartments at about 3 a.m. But the gas remained off overnight and into the early morning until it could be turned back on when the Gas Company can have access to each of the 36 apartments, Davis said.