Pasco deputy uses Facebook to end standoff with armed suicidal man

From TampaBay.com

ODESSA — Logging onto Facebook at work Wednesday morning may have helped one Pasco County Sheriff's Deputy save a man's life.

The man, who was not immediately identified, got into an argument with his wife around 11:00 a.m. Wednesday, barricaded himself in a shed and told his wife he was "going to do something to make the cops kill me," officials said.

The man, who lives at 1626 Chesapeake Drive, was armed with a handgun, deputies said.

Authorities, searching for a way to contact the man, learned there was no phone in the shed, but there was a computer.

Cpl. Art Morrison II, a member of the Sheriff's Office hostage negotiating team, sent a Facebook friend request to the man inside the shed to initiate conversation.

It worked.

After accepting his request, the two began to chat. Eventually, after the man set a mattress on fire, he left the shed at Morrison's behest, officials said.

The man was immediately taken into custody under the state's Baker Act.

No one was injured in the standoff.