83-year-old Wilford Burgess made headlines this week when he ended a 5-hour long police standoff by throwing a trespasser from the roof of his home.
On Tuesday, September 12, a stranger climbed onto Burgess’s roof around 6:30 AM and refused to come down for several hours. Burgess contacted the sheriff’s office in La Puente, California, who then contacted crisis negotiators to help bring the man down.
Burgess’s granddaughter Ashley Wrenn woke up around 7:00 AM to the sounds of deputies yelling “We know where you are. We can see you,” reports the Daily Mail. Wrenn came outside and tried to convince the man to come down.
“I told him we don’t want him hurt, just want him off the roof,” she said.
Later in the morning, the neighbor’s son appeared and threatened the man, warning him not to jump onto their property. The man climbed down and ran into the neighbor’s garage, but retreated back onto Burgess’s roof.
After 5 hours of negotiating, the homeowner grew frustrated and decided to solve the problem himself. With the help from a neighbor’s ladder, Burgess climbed up, grabbed the trespasser, and unceremoniously shoved him from the roof. The entire incident was captured on video by Wrenn. “My grandfather climbed the ladder quick. He pushed the guy to a corner of the roof and threw him off the roof,” she told San Gabriel Valley Newspapers reporter Ruby Gonzales.
“My grandfather was so upset. [He] told him, ‘You need to get down and off my roof,'” Wrenn continued. “It was a crazy morning.”
See the full news report and Wrenn’s video below.