An unidentified man was shot and killed by police in Austin, Texas, US, after the attempted serving of a search warrant related to the man's overgrown lawn.
Police did not provide a name for the man who was killed because his survivors still had to be notified, but said he was in his 50s.
A fire also broke out during the dispute that quickly spread though the house.
The incident occurred at about 9:16 a.m. on Wednesday, when Austin Police officers and contractors working for the Austin Code Department went to serve the warrant regarding an overgrown lawn in the front and back yards, police chief Joseph Chacon told reporters in a news conference.
The lawn had been an "ongoing issue" for the Code department, Chacon explained.
Officers left the warrant at the front door at the house, and the contractors began to do lawn work on the house.
About an hour later an officer reported that shots had been fired from someone inside the house. The contractors were rushed to safety, and a SWAT team was called to the house.
The SWAT team arrived at roughly 10:43 a.m., along with a mental health counselor and a crisis negotiator. Once they arrived, officers spent “several hours” attempting to communicate with the man, but were unsuccessful, Chacon said.
Several hours later, at 3:19 p.m., the man fired “several shots” at officers located in the back of the house.
Officers then entered the home with a robot. The robot was able to observe that a fire had been started in the house and was “beginning to spread quickly.”
The officers spent the next 20 minutes trying to get the man to leave the house with a public address system because the house appeared to be “fully engulfed in flames.”
The Austin Fire Department was then called to the scene to contain the fire. It was unclear how exactly the fire started.
The man finally stepped out of the garage at 3:39 p.m. with “weapons in hand,” Chacon said. A SWAT team officer then shot the suspect, who “went down with a gunshot wound.”
Officers were able to disarm the man and pull him away from his house. He was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
The SWAT officer will be placed on, administrative duty pending an outcome of both a criminal and administrative investigation, Chacon said. (The Hill)