Police use tear gas to end stand off with machete-wielding trucker
Published 3:25 pm Wednesday, January 30, 2019
A standoff between police and a truck driver armed with a machete ended Wednesday afternoon after police used tear gas to get the driver out of the truck.
The standoff brought traffic to a standstill on a section of Interstate 10 in Mississippi for approximately 5 hours, starting around 9 a.m.
Mississippi Highway Patrol troopers told media outlets that the truck driver had come in contact with three other vehicles between Alabama and where the standoff occurred.
The truck driver has a machete and there was some kind of road rage incident involving another truck driver, the Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell said.
Marcia Hill with the sheriff’s office said the driver in the standoff had been operating the rig recklessly on the interstate in Alabama and deputies were able to stop the vehicle after it entered Mississippi. One of the vehicles he reportedly ran off the road was an ambulance, Hill said.
She said when the truck entered Mississippi, the driver initially stopped for deputies.
“He got out of the truck with a machete in his hand and came at the deputy, and the deputies backed off,” Hill said. “The driver got back in his truck and took off.”
No injuries have been reported.