Child custody disagreements may leave a child traumatized and the family worried, antagonized and panicked. In Texas, attempts to access a child without having the legal authority to do so could result in a person ending up in jail.
In a recent child custody dispute in Texas, a man was accused of kidnapping his daughter, who is only 2-years-old. The incident prompted an Amber Alert and led to a SWAT standoff. The man, who was arrested, appeared in court before a county judge recently.
The child’s father, who is 33-years-old, was arrested after a two-hour standoff with SWAT personnel, which ended moments after hostage negotiators successfully persuaded the man to surrender his daughter. On a night previous to the surrender, law enforcement officials issued an Amber Alert, believing the child was in immediate or grave danger. The court had awarded custody of the daughter to her mother. Almost immediately following that announcement, the father broke into her house and took the child.
The standoff started at 7:00 a.m. on a local highway and a chase ensued after a trooper spotted the man. The chase came to an end in a parking lot, where a trooper tried to communicate with the man who refused to come out of his vehicle.
Hostage negotiators and a team of troopers responded and started making attempts to convince the man to surrender the child. The negotiations continued for about two more hours. After the man surrendered the child, law enforcement personnel simultaneously stunned the suspect with tasers while one official fired non-lethal ammunition and took the dad into custody.
The man was charged with endangering the life of the child. The child was returned to her grandparents’ home.
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