Court papers revealed new details about the incident that led to a Sunday morning shelter-in-place order in part of Newtown Township.
As previously reported, the incident lasted several hours and ended with a man being taken into custody.
A criminal complaint filed by a Newtown Township detective showed that the man believed to be holed up inside a house on Independence Place in the Headley Trace development was captured walking around the neighborhood about three hours after the incident began.
“Negotiators were able to make contact with [the man] via phone … [he] advised that he was not at the house, but was in fact, now walking around the neighborhood,” the detective wrote.
Officers were able to locate the man – identified as John William Spiropoulos, 34, of Newtown Township – on foot in the neighborhood of the townhome complex, police said.
Spiropoulos was reported to have been taken into custody without incident.
Police said they had tried to get in contact with Spiropoulos previously and received no response, which led to them suspecting that he was in the residence.
Rumors and a report that the man was an off-duty law enforcement officer were untrue, according to police.
Online and public records reviewed by this news organization showed no evidence that the man worked in civilian law enforcement.
Police said officers were dispatched to the Headley Trace complex for a report of a domestic disturbance between a man and a woman around 7 a.m.
Officers arrived to find the woman and learned that she had managed to escape from the rear of a townhome, authorities said.
The woman told officers that she had been assaulted by Spiropoulos, police said.
The woman told investigators Spiropoulos had grabbed her hair, struck her in the face, and she believed he pointed a gun at the back of her head, police said.
Due to concerns the man was armed and holed up in a townhome, multiple departments responded, the shelter-in-place order was issued, and the South Central Emergency Response Team was activated, Newtown Township Chief of Police John Hearn said.
With snipers watching, tactical officers from multiple departments used armored trucks to remove neighbors from surrounding townhomes during the standoff.
Spiropoulos was preliminarily arraigned Sunday night by on-call District Judge Maggie Snow on charges of terroristic threats, simple assault, and harassment. He was sent to the Bucks County Correctional Facility and bailed out Monday on a $5,000 surety bond.
Editor’s Note: All individuals arrested or charged with a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty. The story was compiled using information from police and public court documents.
