Traffic-stopping highway standoff leads to arrest in southwest Houston

A man threatening to take his life Tuesday night from a towering ramp that connects the Southwest Freeway and Sam Houston Parkway brought rush hour traffic to a halt for several hours as police tried coaxing him from the edge.

The unidentified man was initially suspected of damaging a car at an apartment complex around 4:15 p.m. but ended up leading Houston police to his precarious perch after fleeing a traffic stop. He led the officers on a lengthy chase through southwest Houston, said Henry Gaw, an assistant chief of Houston Police Department.

He stopped on the highway, brandished a razor blade and then tossed it to the side, Gaw said. Officers then watched him straddle the railing.

“He was standing on his tippy toes,” Gaw said at a news conference. “I was holding my breath when I saw him doing that.”

The officers spent more than three hours trying to keep him from the edge, even as a swath of rain swept through the Houston area. He was apprehended just after 9 p.m., police said.

Gaw said that an officer stunned the man with a Taser during the apprehension. A doctor was at the scene and treated him before he was put into the back of a patrol vehicle, he continued.

The standoff, which brought HPD’s Hostage Negotiation Team and SWAT to the scene, backed up traffic on the highway for several hours.

“We had a bad traffic jam. Couldn’t have chosen a worse time to do this,” Gaw said.

The man could face charges ranging from evading to criminal mischief