OSP SWAT caravan was heading to NE Oregon incident
A fast-moving caravan of police vehicles, including an armored car, zoomed north through and out of Central Oregon Monday evening, prompting many onlookers to wonder what was going on.
Officials said Tuesday they were called to an incident in northeast Oregon, but were canceled just as they arrived in the area, as local authorities made sure a woman and her son were safe.
Wallowa County Sheriff Steve Rogers told The Associated Press that the man, reportedly armed with a handgun, shotgun and rifle, made threats against his girlfriend and sheriff’s deputies.
Authorities said that included a threat to cut off her home’s front porch, before later running into the woods.
Rogers says the woman lives among a few dozen homes 20 to 25 miles south of Imnaha in far northeast Oregon.
Rogers says the man returned early Tuesday and continued to make threats, so deputies closed in, at which point the man fled.
Rogers said the man was at large Tuesday but was not considered a threat to the broader community, so no search was underway.
Oregon State Police Lt. Bill Fugate said many rural communities depend on OSP’s SWAT team for tactical response needs, but the specialty troopers were in Bend on Monday for training, more than six hours away.
More than a dozen Oregon State Police vehicles, including an armored vehicle, were dispatched just before 7 p.m. on the long trip to Enterprise, arriving in about four hours. But their call-out was canceled just as they arrived.
According to a report from the Website Wallowa Valley Online, Rogers said Scott Fouste of Imnaha led officers on a lengthy chase into Umatilla County and was still on the run Tuesday.
Still, he is considered armed and dangerous, having made threats to law enforcement. The Wallowa County Online Website said Fouste, who had several guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, supposedly had used a chainsaw on the home’s front door.
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Fouste was asked to contact Oregon State Police at (541) 963-7175 (La Grande Office), or the Wallowa County Sheriff’s Office at (541) 426-3131.
