As dawn broke in a Jacksonville neighborhood usually filled\u00a0with the sounds of teachers and staff arriving for the day, the peace was pierced with the tinny resonance of police using a loudspeaker to urge a barricaded man to surrender.<\/p>\n
It was a message repeated over and over for hours Friday until the man finally stepped out of the house in the 700 block of Park Street and was taken into custody.<\/p>\n
Jacksonville police had initially responded about 1:20 a.m. to the house because of a domestic disturbance in which shots were reportedly fired. One woman was taken to Jacksonville Memorial Hospital for treatment and later released.<\/p>\n
Officers said the woman had been struck and a firearm was discharged.<\/p>\n
Jacksonville police tried to talk to the man who remained inside, identified as 37-year-old Thomas M. Loughary, but he was uncooperative, according to a police report. Illinois State Police was called to assist with crisis negotiators and SWAT officers.<\/p>\n
Because of the proximity to Jacksonville Middle School and some Illinois College outdoor facilities, the middle school was closed for the day and the college canceled outdoor activities.<\/p>\n
For hours, multiple law enforcement officers from Illinois State Police, Jacksonville police and Morgan County Sheriff’s Department kept watch and tried to get\u00a0Loughary to communicate with them. About 8 a.m., the man briefly appeared at a window and then opened the front door several times long enough to yell expletives as police offered to provide a cellphone so he could talk to them.<\/p>\n
“We need to know everything is OK inside. We need to communicate with you. We are not going away,” a voice over the loudspeaker said.<\/p>\n
The front door slammed shut and the waiting continued for more than three more hours.<\/p>\n
About 11:30 a.m., Loughary left the house, stopped on a front stoop to show he was unarmed, and was taken into custody.<\/p>\n
He was taken to Jacksonville Memorial Hospital for evaluation, according to police. Neither he nor officers were injured, according to a report.<\/p>\n
Police said later Friday that\u00a0Loughary was arrested on charges of domestic battery, aggravated discharge of a firearm, possession of a weapon by a felon, and possession of a weapon with a revoked firearm owner’s card.<\/p>\n
Loughary was being held in the Morgan County jail while awaiting a court appearance.<\/p>\n
Dennis Mathes of the Journal-Courier contributed information to this article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As dawn broke in a Jacksonville neighborhood usually filled\u00a0with the sounds of teachers and staff arriving for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4613,116,118,117,115,4614,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-245970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-breakingnews","9":"tag-jacksonville","10":"tag-jacksonville-headlines","11":"tag-jacksonville-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pubnow","14":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}