Man found dead in Leavenworth apartment after standoff with police
An hours-long standoff at a Leavenworth, Kansas, apartment complex ended Thursday after a man fatally shot himself, according to local officials.
In an email to The Star on Friday, Leavenworth Police Department’s chief of police Patrick Kitchens told The Star that officers and U.S. Marshals were attempting to serve felony warrants to Joseph Lee Dickey, 36, at an apartment complex in the 700 block of North 13th Terrace on Thursday when Dickey refused to leave the residence.
Dickey was facing two counts of aggravated assault and one count of criminal discharge of a firearm in connection to a shooting that occurred on Feb. 14, according to a Friday news release from Micah Bray, a spokesperson for the Leavenworth County Attorney’s Office.
Officers arrived at the complex around 1 p.m., where they established a perimeter and evacuated several apartments in the area, Kitchens said.
According to the chief, the department’s crisis negotiators attempted to convince Dickey to surrender until around 5:15 p.m., when first responders sent a “tear car” into the residence.
Shortly after, Kitchens said Dickey fired eight to 10 rounds from a rifle toward officials.
No officers or marshals were struck or injured by the gunfire, nor did they return fire toward Dickey, Bray said.
The department then sent two robots into the apartment to search for Dickey, which found the man dead in the apartment’s bathroom, Kitchens said.
According to Bray, a preliminary investigation revealed Dickey died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The standoff ended around 5:30 p.m., Kitchens said, but detectives did not leave the scene until sometime after midnight.
Initial reports from local news outlets that indicated the standoff lasted 11 hours, that a marshal was struck by shrapnel and that Dickey had a hostage in the building were not accurate, Kitchens said.
According to court records, Dickey has previously been convicted in Leavenworth of theft between $1,000 and $25,000 in 2014 and commercial use/possession of explosives to commit a crime in 2016.
