Man charged with shooting at cops during standoff
A 32-year-old Milwaukee man at the center of an hourslong standoff with police fired directly at officers trying to rescue a hostage, and randomly into a ceiling that endangered children sleeping upstairs, according to charges filed Friday.
Delon Montrey Lockett faces seven felonies — including attempted homicide and taking a hostage — plus a misdemeanor in the March 22 incident. According to the criminal complaint: Police responded to an apartment in the 7600 block of North 78th Street around 4 a.m. after neighbors reported a shooting. They found two children in the hallway who said their daddy was arguing with their mother. Officers quickly evacuated the children and neighbors and began trying to talk with Lockett.
They could hear the children’s mother repeatedly asking him not to hit her or point the gun at her head. Officers determined the couple was in the bathroom in the apartment.
For more than five hours, officers tried to get Lockett to release the woman and surrender. When the woman stopped talking, after a gunshot, officers feared she might have been shot and decided to execute a rescue operation.
As one officer put a ballistic shield against the bathroom door and another broke it down with a ram, two or three shots came toward the officers from inside the bathroom, but none struck the officers.
Once inside, they pulled out the woman and arrested Lockett, who had apparently run out of ammunition.
The woman told police that Lockett had been acting paranoid and took her into the bathroom tub at gunpoint and had her lay on top of him like a human shield.
According to the complaint, Lockett fired blind shots through the bathroom door and into the ceiling. A minor in the apartment upstairs said he was frightened by the shots, some of which hit the toilet in the bathroom right across the hall from where he was sleeping.
Lockett is charged with three counts of recklessly endangering safety of two officers and the minor upstairs, as well as attempted first-degree homicide of the first officer who had arrived. He is charged with domestic abuse and taking a hostage, regarding the woman, and with failing to comply when officers were trying to arrest him.
He was being held at the Milwaukee County Jail, on bail of more than $100,000.