Domestic complaint escalates into seven-hour ordeal

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Police take Jason Litke, 32, third from the right, into custody shortly before 10 a.m. on Church Street in Beacon Falls. LARAINE WESCHLER

BEACON FALLS — Police descended on a Church Street home at 3 a.m. Monday morning after a woman reported that her ex-boyfriend intruded in her house.

Jason Litke, 32, of 242 May St. in Naugatuck, threw “blunt objects” at his ex-girlfriend in her Beacon Falls apartment Sunday night, prompting her to flee to a friend’s home in Waterbury, according to police.

Litke went on to make threatening phone calls, saying he would “put her down like a dog,” according to police. The girlfriend told Waterbury police that he was drinking and armed with a shotgun. She has a protective order against him.

Officers from Beacon Falls, Troop I, state police, and an Emergency Service Unit responded to the scene, surrounding the home. Police made several attempts to make contact with Litke, to no avail, and alerted neighbors of the situation.

The incident ended peacefully about seven hours later when police used non-lethal force to subdue Litke and take him into custody. Before being taken into custody, police sent a remote-controlled robot into the home to assess the situation.

According to First Selectman Gerard Smith said Litke, who was awakened by the robot, threw the robot out the front door. He was arrested shortly after, when police shot Litke with a beanbag, he said.

According to Smith, police waited for Litke to sleep off his drunkenness before stepping in.

“They waited for cooler heads to prevail in the morning,” Smith said. “It was a long day, but no one got hurt. … I was glad it ended the way it did.”

Bill Gavrish, a neighbor two houses down, watched the whole incident unfold from his second story porch. Gavrish said he saw Litke come out and curse at the police after police sent in the robot. He said police shot Litke in the groin, with a non-lethal weapon, and he ran back into the house. Police followed and reemerged with Litke in custody a few minutes later.

Litke suffered “minor injuries” in the incident and was treated and released from Waterbury Hospital, police said. He was being held on $100,000 bond Monday. He’s charged with violating a protective order, interfering with an officer, disorderly conduct, harassment in the second, assault in the third degree and threatening. He is scheduled to appear in Derby Superior Court Tuesday.

No troopers were injured in the incident.

Litke was not armed during his brief confrontation with troopers. The shotgun was later recovered in the apartment, according to police.

Litke was a veteran of the Iraq war, according to neighbors. He was wearing an Army shirt when he was arrested.

“He might have problems from the war,” neighbor Roxanne Norton said. “He’s got to get help.”

She said Litke and his ex-girlfriend were nice neighbors, whose two dogs would sometimes play with her dogs. She said her teenage son played basketball with Litke on a driveway hoop between the two houses.

This is not the first time Litke has been involved in a confrontation with police.

Police block off Church Street in Beacon Falls Monday morning. LARAINE WESCHLER

In 2004, Litke, then aged 25, was arrested in Naugatuck after flipping over a kitchen table during an argument with his mother and running out of his house with a 4-foot stick, according to the Republican American archives. He ran through several backyards, and was confronted by police. Litke demanded police shoot him, and was subdued with the aid of pepper spray during a brief struggle with officers, police said in 2004, according to the archives.

This August, Litke was arrested and charged with illegal operation of a motorcycle without a license, illegal operation of a motor vehicle while under suspension and driving under the influence and at an unreasonable speed, according to files. Litke turned himself in under an arrest warrant in relation to a May 7 accident.

The Republican American contributed to this article.