A 71-year-old Arizona City man has been arrested for Aggravated Assault and Kidnapping after he threatened neighbors with a machete, then assaulted and held hostage, a 42-year-old male relative inside his apartment. The male relative was rescued by Pinal County Sheriff’s deputies after he held up a sign in a bedroom window indicating he was being held hostage by the suspect and the suspect was intending to have deputies kill him.
After the hostage was rescued, the suspect was taken into custody by PCSO tactical team members after a brief confrontation inside the apartment.
On July 12 at 12:30 a.m., the PCSO 9-1-1 Dispatch Center received a call from a neighbor who reported that a subject threatened them with a machete and returned to his apartment. Deputies responded to 10643 W. Carousel Drive, in Arizona City, to contact the man, later identified at Jack Elliot, an Arizona City resident.
When deputies arrived they spoke to the neighbors who said that they were outside their apartments and Jack was drunk and had threatened them with a machete. Jack went inside his apartment without harming the neighbors, but when they went to Jack’s door, he swung the machete at them through the screen door, missing them, but damaging the door. They believed that Jack may have his son-in-law in the house with him.
Deputies used a loudspeaker to ask Jack to come out of the apartment, but Jack came to the door, yelled something incoherently and slammed the door.
Sheriff Paul Babeu said, “After a few minutes of the standoff, a man was seen in the back window of the apartment holding up a sign that read: “He wants suicide by cop”. A few moments later the same male subject held up another sign reading: “I want to get out”. Babeu went on to say, “This is when our deputies made a crucial decision to approach the apartment and attempt a rescue of the hostage. Once they identified that the man was in fact being held against his will, they coaxed him to come out of the window to safety.” “This proved to be the right action to rescue the hostage from a life-threatening situation and help us resolve the standoff without any further injury.”
The man extricated from the apartment identified himself as Jack’s stepson who lives in the apartment. He said that Jack was drunk and they had a confrontation that ended with Jack assaulting him with the machete (punching him with the blunt end of the weapon). Jack then ordered the victim to his room and threatened to kill him if he tried to leave.
At some point in the standoff after the hostage was rescued, Jack opened the door and lay down the machete. He then closed the door, retreating back inside the residence. After learning from the hostage that Jack had no firearms in the apartment, a tactical team was deployed to go in the apartment to arrest Jack. Once inside the apartment, Jack attempted to flee to a back bedroom, but was stopped when a deputy fired a less-lethal beanbag projectile, hitting his leg.
He was then taken into custody. He was discovered to have a knife in a belt scabbard when he was arrested.
Jack was taken to a local hospital for treatment of his leg injury and released. He was booked into the PCSO Adult Detention facility, where he was held for arraignment.