Houston Police responded to the 9000 block of Sterlingshire, where they found a man on the apartment complex’s roof. The man, Patrick Torres, had taken two women hostage earlier and then escaped to the roof with several knives. Houston Police SWAT responded to the scene with their MARS RDD Elevated Tactics System and raised it to the roof in front of the apartment complex so that suspect could walk down. For nearly four hours, officers negotiated with the suspect to come down but he refused, as his intentions were to either jump to his death or die by “suicide by cop”.
SWAT then made the decision to climb the MARS system and tase/apprehend the suspect before he could harm himself.