By Russ Tarby
Contributing Writer
One of Liverpool’s busiest streets — First Street — was shut down between Tulip and Vine streets on the morning of Sept. 14 after an apartment resident loudly broke a series of second-floor windows at 316 First St.
At least seven windows were smashed from within and an air conditioner was thrown through one window before crashing onto the sidewalk.
The building at 316 First houses the Shear Mystique hair salon at the front and apartments in the rear two-story section.
More than a half-dozen officers including three from the Liverpool Police Department responded to the incident shortly after it was called in to 911 at 10:28 a.m. Monday, Sept. 14.
“What we had was a man undergoing a crisis, a man who refused to leave his apartment,” explained Liverpool Police Chief Don Morris, who was on the scene.
“We set up a perimeter, closed off the street for one block and called in two crisis-intervention specialists from the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office as well as one from the Veteran’s Administration.”
Approximately 90 minutes later, those negotiators convinced the man to come out, and an LPD officer drove him to the VA Hospital in Syracuse.
Morris said his department is familiar with the man in question.
“We’ve dealt with him before on non-criminal matters,” Morris said,
Assisting Morris at the scene were LPD Sgt. Dave Sturtz and longtime Officer Sean Pierce.
Several sheriff’s deputies and New York State Police Troopers also assisted in closing the businesses on that block — including Nichols Supermarket — while negotiations continued.
Morris said he was pleased with the incident’s outcome.
“You never know how these kind of things are going to go,” he said. “They can go sideways. In this case, it was a generally positive result.”
