Man surrenders following a nine-hour standoff with sheriff's deputies

PERU TOWNSHIP — A man has surrendered and is in the custody of the Huron County Sheriff's Office following a nine-hour standoff Saturday. Local sheriff's deputies swarmed around a house at the corner of Johnson and Brown roads Saturday afternoon. Inside, according to officials at the scene, was Quentin Howell, 24, who was threatening to harm himself and burn the house down. Huron County deputies were joined by deputies and a SWAT team from the Erie County Sheriff's Department. Huron County Chief Deputy David Ditz said the situation had a successful resolution. Ditz said Howell got into an argument with his girlfriend Friday night which resulted in the sheriff's office getting a call around 11:40 a.m. Saturday for a disturbance. Howell was making threats to harm himself, his partner and his girlfriend's child, Ditz said. "Once we got there, he was very non-compliant, so we reached out, we brought in our special response team and our negotiator," Ditz said. "Erie County has some other resources that we don't have here and they sent their special response team down." This included an armored vehicle, drones and additional personnel to assist in on scene. Ditz said they tried negotiating with Howell through texts and phone calls but he wouldn't come out of the home. Ditz said the command staff realized Howell wouldn't come out on his own. Around 9 p.m. the officers broke a window to get a camera into the home. "At that point, he became compliant and exited the home. He was taken to an ambulance, taken to the hospital to make sure he was physically OK, which he was," Ditz said. "That was our primary concern and no one got hurt. After that, he was brought here to the sheriff's office and he's in jail right now." Erie County Sheriff Paul Sigsworth said after a forced entry the man surrendered without incident. There were no injuries. "No matter what it takes," Sigsworth said. "It may take a few minutes or a few hours. We got out of there without any injuries and that is the key. Members of the Huron River Joint Fire District were on hand most of the day in case of a fire. Ditz said the deputies that day worked numerous hours at the call before leaving there to work the road. "I want to say great things about our deputies, first of all, from our detectives that showed up, our special response team, our road deputies," Ditz said. "Our guys who were off duty doing search warrants for us and bringing them out." Ditz thanked the Erie County Sheriff's Office, the Erie County special response team, Huron and Perkins Police Departments for assisting on the call. "(They) all dropped what they were doing to come help us and I can't thank them enough, Ditz said. "At the end of the day, nobody's hurt, everybody's safe and that's the most important thing." Reflector staff writer LynAnne Vucovich contributed to this story.