May 27--The 74-year-old woman was frail and had trouble walking.
But whatever had seized control of her mind gave her the strength to hold off a SWAT team for 22 hours, even after she was hit by tear gas and rubber bullets.
At a news conference Tuesday, Los Angeles County sheriff's officials released new details about the high-stakes standoff that unfolded last week between deputies and the woman, who was armed with a six-shot revolver and had crawled under a mobile home in Woodland Hills after brandishing the weapon at paramedics, deputies and neighbors.
She had fired five shots at a police robot, and the SWAT team members believed she still had one round left when they stripped off much of their protective gear so they could fit under the house and attempt to handcuff her.
It was a high-risk operation. But commanders concluded that, due to her "confused, delusional" mental state, they could not persuade her to come out.
She seemed impervious to the pain of the tear gas and nonlethal bullets, officials said. At one point, she declared that she was no longer holding the gun, but that turned out to be a ruse. The SWAT team members marveled at her toughness but also worried for the well-being of an elderly person in a stressful situation on a cold night.
A surveillance camera on the robot, which also acted as a two-way radio for crisis negotiators to communicate with her, showed that she had dropped the gun, but it probably was still within her reach.
The deputies subdued her and pulled her from underneath the house at about 3:30 a.m. Friday. She was suffering from hypothermia, with a body temperature of 85 degrees, so she may not have survived much longer.
"They were going head first against an armed suspect with no tactical protection, no helmets, no vests, and she had the ability to shoot one of them," said the unit commander, Lt. Bruce Chase.
The woman, who has not been identified, remains hospitalized. Family members came to the news conference to praise sheriff's officials for their restraint in not firing at her.
Her son, who asked not to be identified, said she began sending strange emails a few days before the incident, including a message full of spelling errors when she was normally "an editor at heart."
The standoff began after someone called 911 around 5:30 a.m. Thursday to report that an elderly woman was suffering from chest pains.
When paramedics arrived at the mobile home park in the 4200 block of Topanga Canyon Boulevard, the woman grabbed a paramedic's arm, pulled out the revolver and fled toward a neighbor's mobile home, said Capt. Patrick Davoren of the Malibu Lost Hills Station.
She waved the gun at residents, yelling that she was going to shoot and that it was her last day on Earth, Chase said. The mobile home complex was quickly evacuated.
When sheriff's officials realized they were dealing with an elderly woman who was possibly mentally ill, they decided to play a waiting game. But they began to fear that the woman would die under the house.
"The team is not in a hurry to bring this to an end if we think we can peacefully resolve it," said Cmdr. David Halm. "We were out there 22 hours, and we just continued to work the problem and see what we could do."
The woman has not been charged with any crimes as investigators continue to examine the incident.
