9 hour standoff ends near border of Madera and Merced counties

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- A 9 hour standoff and swat situation which spanned two counties came to a peaceful ending. It happened near Highway 152 and 59, near the border of Madera and Merced counties.

It took four agencies and dozens of officers, but the 26-year-old suspect is in jail tonight. It was the "bat" that helped deputies and police end an hours long standoff. They bring out the armored vehicle when there's hostage situations or in this case, a man who needed to be forced out of a house.

Madera County Sheriff Jay Varney said, "If you're going to try to have someone out of the house with gas you have to have a plan and this helped us not expose officers on foot."

But that was towards the 9th hour. It started around 3:00 Thursday morning. That's when police say Rodrigo Fernandez fired a gun outside of a woman's house in Merced County and then drove to a house in Madera County, where he was living with four other men, including Arturo Villa who watched the whole thing go down. He told us in Spanish, "The officer said he had a gun. But we had no idea."

Villa says he didn't know the guy very well and didn't know what prompted the standoff. He also says he's angry because he was never told what was happening.

Reya Misleh owns the Red Top Market and also felt as if he was in the dark. "We lost business for half a day and that leaves me open just now."

Reya told us he lost a few hundred dollars in business, while deputies tried to negotiate and communicate in both English and Spanish. In the end it was a full swat call a combined team with dozens of police and deputies who were able to get Fernandez to surrender.

Sheriff Jay Varney said, "After attempting to get him to negotiate with us for about 75 minutes after 3 hours of calling him out we introduced gas in the house and he came out through one of the windows."