A Fleetwood man was shot during a standoff with officers from multiple law enforcement agencies after he led police on a chase that ended on Route 61 in Ontelaunee Township, Berks County District Attorney John T. Adams said Friday.<\/p>\n
The incident happened before 4:30 a.m., when police ordered Route 61 closed in both directions between Route 73 and Snyder Road for nearly six hours for what was reported as a police incident.<\/p>\n
Adams described the incident as a police-involved shooting of the suspect, Ryan N. Billings, 54, who is expected to survive his injuries.<\/p>\n
Adams said the standoff happened after a state trooper used a driving maneuver to force Billings\u2019 vehicle to stop.<\/p>\n
A standoff with state and local police followed, with members of the Berks County Emergency Response Team, which is specially trained in standoffs, responding.<\/p>\n
Adams said county detectives under his purview will investigate along with state police.<\/p>\n
Billings was charged Friday with nine counts each of assault on a law enforcement officer, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment, as well as single counts of DUI and fleeing or attempting to elude an officer.<\/p>\n
Following arraignment Friday afternoon before District Judge Brian K. Strand in Bern Township, Billings was committed to Berks County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail to await a hearing.<\/p>\n
According to the criminal complaint:<\/p>\n
Billings\u2019 wife called 911 shortly before 7 p.m. Thursday, asking for a welfare check on her husband after he threatened self-harm via text messages. She said he was seen leaving his home on Pine Street with an AR-15-style rifle and getting into his car that left in an unknown direction.<\/p>\n
Fleetwood police entered him as a missing and endangered person shortly before 11 p.m. and obtained emergency approval to follow his travels via cellular tower pings from his mobile phone.<\/p>\n
A ping placed his vehicle near Kutztown. A Kutztown officer spotted the car and followed it until other units closed in. A traffic stop was initiated in the 2800 block of Moselem Springs Road, which is Route 662, in Richmond Township.<\/p>\n
Billings didn\u2019t stop, instead continuing north on Route 662 to Route 61 in Perry Township before making a U-turn and heading south.<\/p>\n
State police from the Hamburg station joined the pursuit.<\/p>\n
A trooper deployed a maneuver that successfully stopped the car.<\/p>\n
Billings refused orders to get out of the car, made suicide-by-cop utterances and kept reaching for the rifle.<\/p>\n
He eventually was seen pointing the rifle out the driver\u2019s side window. When he refused to drop the weapon, multiple officers fired, striking him just after midnight.<\/p>\n
Despite being wounded, he continued to refuse to get out of the car. He did, however, drop the rifle.<\/p>\n
The BCERT team arrived about 2:45 a.m. Friday and took him into custody.<\/p>\n
A second AR-15-style rifle was found in the vehicle along with open containers of alcohol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Fleetwood man was shot during a standoff with officers from multiple law enforcement agencies after he led…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1378,623,128,130,129,26456,41569,18598],"class_list":{"0":"post-87719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-ontelaunee-township","9":"tag-police-shooting","10":"tag-reading-city","11":"tag-reading-city-headlines","12":"tag-reading-city-news","13":"tag-route-61","14":"tag-rt-61","15":"tag-standoff"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}