Lubbock Police were able to deescalate a tense situation following a central Lubbock shooting Monday night. The suspect in that shooting who barricaded himself in a home voluntarily and peacefully surrendered to police after LPD negotiation efforts.
Lubbock Police first learned of the conflict at 7:25 p.m., when they received a call from Covenant Hospital stating that a victim of a gun shot wound arrived at the hospital.
The victim gave LPD a description of the suspect and told police the shooting happened on the 2800 block of 35th Street.
Lt. Leath McClure stated that LPD officers arrived at 35th Street within a half hour of the initial call. Responding officers noticed a Volkswagen in the driveway that was listed as stolen. They also saw the suspect, Lanny Sanders, on the porch of the home. Sanders ran inside and barricaded himself in the home upon seeing the officers.
Lubbock Police SWAT and Negotiations were called out to assist. Officers could be heard speaking over megaphones, asking the suspect to move curtains, then asking him to dial a certain phone number.
“I don’t know like five or six cops in the driveway with their guns drawn toward the house,” said Erik Ospino as he recalled the scene. Ospino said his house is next door to the home the suspect barricaded himself in. “They had just been trying to communicate over the car bullhorn into the house, they’d been giving him instructions like, ‘move the curtains so that we know you’re hearing us.'”
Officers reported hearing a gun shot from inside the home after a while, but confirmed later that no one was hurt in that gunfire.
Homes in the neighborhood were evacuated then as a precaution while SWAT and Negotiations continued their work.
“Two officers were yelling at a suspect– I guess a guy– to get down and after that we saw multiple officers running toward the house,” recalled Robert Salazar who lives nearby and was evacuated Monday evening. “As the guy was fleeing and kind of got scared, it scared all of us. About 35 to 45 minutes later, we thought we heard a gunshot . I wasn’t too sure if that’s what we heard or not. And that’s when they told us to evacuate the house”
McClure said Sanders and the victim were the only two people involved in the conflict. He added that the home on 35th belonged to the victim, but Sanders had been temporarily staying there.
McClure said that the victim’s injuries were not life threatening.
This is the second time in two days that Lubbock Police SWAT and Negotiations helped to successfully deescalate a situation where a suspect was barricaded inside a residence.
