Crime & Justice

Pittsburgh ‘Sovereign Citizen’ Dead After Hours-Long Police Standoff

IT’S ALL OVER

It started at around 11:35 a.m. when sheriff’s deputies went to a house to serve an eviction notice.

An image of crime scene tape.
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

The man who opened fire on officers as they attempted to serve an eviction notice in Pittsburgh’s Garfield neighborhood Wednesday—sparking an hours-long standoff involving hundreds of shots—has died, authorities said. He was identified as 63-year-old William Hardison Sr., with WPXI-TV reporting that he identified as a sovereign citizen—a loosely-affiliated group of anti-government activists who believe they are exempt from the law. His cause of death was not immediately released. The incident began at around 11:35 a.m., when Allegheny County Sheriff’s deputies went to a house in the neighborhood to serve an eviction notice. That’s when shots suddenly rang out. Shocking video appeared to show shots fired in rapid succession as hundreds of cops—including SWAT teams and officers in helicopters—responded. “I’ve never heard bullets like this,” one neighbor told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Something you’d see in a movie.”

Read it at WPX

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