
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 9, 1995                   TAG: 9506090094
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

POLICE TALK MAN OUT OF SUICIDE AFTER STANDOFF

After nearly an hour of cool talk in Thursday afternoon's 90 degree heat, Roanoke police persuaded a man who was threatening suicide to relinquish a knife.

The man held police off from the second floor of an apartment in 812 Hunt Ave. N.W. Several police officers huddled in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs trying to calm the man, whose name was not released.

Also in the apartment, according to Sgt. K.A. Johnson, was a pregnant woman who went in on her own to talk to the man. Neighbors said she lived in the apartment. Johnson said the man apparently was upset over problems with a girlfriend, but he did not know if the pregnant woman was the girlfriend.

Just before 5 p.m., another man, who Johnson could not identify, arrived and began talking to the man with the knife. Minutes later police and the second man brought the man out of the apartment.

Johnson said the man was taken to Roanoke Memorial Hospital where he will be evaluated to see if he needs psychiatric treatment.

by CNB