What we know about Sunday’s standoff

Early Monday morning, around 12:30 a.m., local authorities were finally able to apprehend Brandon Straitiff after a nearly six-hour standoff.

Straitiff, 22, barricaded himself inside a Pocatello trailer Sunday night after an earlier confrontation led to him opening fire in the direction of a neighbor.

The trailer he was found in, located at Sunny Creek Courts, is directly across the street from a trailer he was moving into.

According to Bannock County Sheriff Lorin Nielsen, people on the scene directed local authorities to the spot where he was hiding.

“In fact, when we showed up they knew what was going on and they pointed to that direction,” Nielsen said.

Authorities from several local agencies spent hours trying to make contact with the suspect, calling out for him to come out or even just pick up his phone with no success.

The surrounding homes were then evacuated to prevent any potential harm that could have been caused by a gunfight.

Sheriff Nielsen said authorities had enough probable cause on the four aggravated assault charges to enter the home, but he said he wanted to wait for a warrant, even though they had permission from the homeowner.

“It just wipes out any other kind of doubt by waiting to get the judge to sign a warrant.”

It took local authorities several hours to obtain both a search warrant and warrant for Straitiff’s arrest, one of the reasons the standoff lasted into the early morning hours Monday.

Teams sent a robot into the home in an attempt to locate Straitiff, “we knew where he wasn’t, but he didn’t know where he was,” Nielsen said.

Not long after, authorities entered the home and located the suspect under a pile of clothes in a closet.

Straitiff had told his girlfriend that he wasn’t going back to jail, leading officers to believe he was a threat. But according to Nielsen, he was unarmed and surrendered “very peacefully.”

Straitiff has a long rap sheet of Bannock County crimes such as assault, battery and malicious injury to property.

“As you look at that history, you can see that this was somebody that we needed to get off the street,” Nielsen said.

Straitiff was arraigned in Bannock County Court Monday.