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Armed Green Beret colonel allegedly had two-hour standoff with police before surrenders
Another Army Green Beret goes off the rails. Too much alcohol. Domestic abuse. Wife calls the cops. The Colonel said "Let's do this!" and got a rifle and pistol.
Evidence of extreme intoxication. He got that last part backwards.State and local police near Joint Base Lewis-McChord, in Washington, spent roughly two hours talking a Special Forces colonel armed with a rifle and pistol into surrendering after they responded to a domestic assault in progress call just after midnight Sunday.
Col. Owen G. Ray, 47, and his wife got into an argument earlier in the evening, according to a probable cause affidavit. Believing her husband was intoxicated, the wife retreated to her children’s bedroom to hide.
She then heard Ray say, “let’s do this,” before he went to the garage where the guns were stored, Pierce County prosecutors wrote in the affidavit. The house is in the town of DuPont, about 10 miles southwest of the base where Ray serves as the Army’s I Corps chief of staff and previously commanded a Special Forces group.
Ray, now armed, went back into the house and found his wife, who proceeded to call the police, “at which point, the defendant became enraged.”
“He pointed the gun at [the wife] and threatened to kill her,” the affidavit reads. “He proceeded to kick [her] over and over with his boots in the face and chest. The two children had woken up and were screaming, ‘don’t kill mom, don’t shoot us.’”
Ray left the room but returned after his wife had tried to barricade the entrance with a bookshelf, the affidavit stated. He smashed the barricade down and waved a gun while yelling threats.
Washington State Patrol and a mix of local police units arrived sometime after midnight. Ray eventually allowed his wife and two of the children to exit at around 12:33 a.m. His teenage daughter followed them out shortly afterward.
Police were able to contact Ray via phone at 12:49 a.m., and he threatened to take his own life as well as anyone who tried to arrest him.
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Originally Posted by Davis
