MINNEAPOLIS - A man who has been holed up in a hotel on the University of Minnesota campus since Monday has been taken into custody.
University spokesman Evan Lapiska says the man was taken into custody about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday. Lapiska says no one was hurt.
Police say they moved to end the standoff after the man began lighting small fires and threatened to burn the building down.
University police Chief Matt Clark says officers used a battering ram to enter the man's sixth-floor room at the Graduate Hotel Tuesday afternoon. That came after chemical irritants earlier Tuesday failed to flush out the man, and some 38 hours after the standoff started.
Police say the man claimed to have a gun but they did not immediately find one. The man didn't appear hurt in the arrest but he was taken to a hospital to be checked.
The standoff started around midnight Monday after police went to do a welfare check on the man at his family's request, and also to arrest him on a warrant for a non-violent criminal charge from the Phoenix, Arizona, area. A woman who was with the man was released late Monday.
The University of Minnesota issued an alert Monday morning about a "public safety situation" at the Graduate Minneapolis Hotel. Police had been negotiating with the man since around midnight, when they got a check welfare call.
At about 9 p.m. Monday, police told KARE 11 that a person in the room with the suspect had been released, but the suspect was still in the room. Police would not say whether the two knew each other. According to the university, the person released was a woman, and was unharmed.
SWAT teams from both Minneapolis and Brooklyn Park were on scene, along with U of M police and Minneapolis police.
