A POLICE officer drew his gun on a man wanted for questioning over a dramatic four-hour siege in Orange early yesterday morning.
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It was a neighbour returning home, after being earlier evacuated, who alerted the officer to the man in her backyard.
Canobolas Local Area Command Inspector Gerard Powell said the man was holding a gun at the time he was arrested which was later found to be a fake.
Emergency service crews were called to a Hill Street property at 1.50am yesterday after they received a triple-0 call that a man wielding a sword had set fire to his home.
Police and fire crews were kept from the property as the man smashed windows, made threats and set numerous fires within the property, before he later escaped out the back door.
Neighbour Regina Fogarty said she was asleep when she heard police knock at her front door to tell her she needed to evacuate due to the fire next door.
When she later returned at 6.45am, Ms Fogarty said there was a single police officer in a patrol car out the front of her home.
“I asked the police if they got the guy and they said he was at large,” she said.
Ms Fogarty then entered her home where she spotted the man through her back window.
“I was walking back down with the cat when a man jumped over the back fence,” she said.
“I told the police and they arrested him.”
Inspector Powell said despite the man’s threats during the height of the siege, it was standard procedure for a single police officer to be stationed at a crime scene after the incident.
“Those threats were not aimed at one particular person ... they were threats of someone in that sort of state of throwing things and smashing windows,” he said.
Inspector Powell said other police were searching for the man, while the officer “guarded the crime scene to protect the evidence”.
“It’s not likely that someone would come back to the scene,” he said.
Inspector Powell said the situation was handled well by all police and the arresting officer was adequately trained to deal with the incident.
nadine.morton@fairfax
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