Police entered their second day of negotiations on Tuesday with a man holed up in a hotel room on the University of Minnesota's campus after officers tried to arrest the man on a warrant out of Arizona.
University Police Chief Matt Clark said the standoff at the Graduate Minneapolis Hotel began early Monday. He has declined to say whether the suspect was armed. A woman who had been with the man in the sixth-floor room was released hours later, though police weren't calling it a hostage situation.
"The individual is still in his room and we're just kind of continuing to try to communicate, and waiting him out. Most of the rest of the operations on campus will be fairly normal," university spokesman Chuck Tombarge said early Tuesday.
The university said there was no direct threat to students walking to spring semester classes. But in a text and online alert early Monday, the university urged individuals to stay away from the area.
Officers initially went to the hotel to do a welfare check and arrest the man on a warrant for a nonviolent "white collar" crime out of Arizona. Tombarge said the woman released from the room late Monday was safe and has been talking with investigators.
An unknown number of guests were evacuated from nearby rooms on Monday as the incident continued. Although the hotel remained open, the university's recreation and wellness center, directly behind the hotel, was closed, as were local streets to accommodate police vehicles.
"Given the current situation and the fact the woman is no longer in the room, we have narrowed a tiny bit the closures on campus," Tombarge said Tuesday. "Basically everything between the northern end of the hotel through the recreation center remains closed."
