|By Big Radio News Staff|
A more than two-hour police standoff ended on the front lawn of a northeast side Janesville home with a man who police said emerged from the tear-gas choked house holding a gun.
Janesville Police have identified 46-year-old Joshua U. Kahn as the man arrested following what police said was an armed standoff on the city’s northeast side on Wednesday.
Janesville police say they took Kahn into custody shortly after 1 p.m. after they say he threatened another person with a gun and sparked a standoff that lasted more than 2 hours at 2021 Excalibur Drive on Wednesday. Police ended up shooting Kahn with “high-velocity, soft, sponge projectile,” Janesville police Sgt. Ben Thompson tells WCLO Radio.
Kahn was holding a gun when he emerged, and that was after police had evacuated the home of a woman Kahn apparently threatened with a gun.
Shortly before noon on Wednesday, police had blocked off streets around the 2000 block of Excalibur Drive while they responded to what officers say was reports of a person armed and blockaded in a house near the intersection of Excalibur Drive and Randolph Road.
Thompson tells WCLO that police took Kahn in custody around 1 p.m. after SWAT officers deployed tear gas canisters inside the Excalibur Drive home Kahn was holed up inside. Thompson said a noise some residents nearby reported as the sound of detonations was not gunfire; it was canisters of gas exploding.
Moments later, police hit Kahn with nonlethal projectiles, and took him in custody.
Police say a woman who knows Kahn reported Kahn was threatening her with a gun inside the house. The woman, who police said later evacuated with the help of patrols, said she’d suspected Kahn was wielding a “b.b. gun.”
Police say they recovered the gun Kahn had apparently threatened the woman with, and they describe it as a real firearm — not a b.b. gun.
It’s not clear whether the gun was loaded.
Police say Kahn is a convicted felon and is barred from possessing a gun.
Thompson says during the standoff, some neighbors evacuated while others sheltered in place.
Janesville police earlier were asking the public to avoid the area, calling the scene a “SWAT investigation.”
A WCLO Radio reporter on scene observed police blockade a three-block area between Wright Road, Excalibur Drive and Randolph Road as a SWAT team used a bullhorn to try to beckon the man out.
At one point, the police presence included a dozen police squad cars, a tactical trailer, and the county’s armored BEARCAT tactical vehicle.
Fire Department officials and a community officer on scene had asked onlookers shortly before noon to stay back from the area along Randolph Road between Excalibur Drive and Spruce Street, because officials said they believed it could be in a “line of fire” in the apparent standoff.
Kahn is being held in custody for reckless endangering safety, felon possessing a gun, domestic disorderly conduct while armed, and failure to comply with police.
Police say they took Kahn to a hospital for “medical assessment and evaluation” after arresting him.
Arrest and court records show Kahn was sentenced to a 3-year prison sentence in 2019 for crimes involving theft.
Court records show that directly following his charges in that case, he apparently had undergone a “temporary commitment” to a health facility.
