FARGO – A SWAT team responded to a north Fargo apartment Monday after officers heard a gunshot inside the residence, later finding a man who had apparently died by suicide, police said.
Someone who knew the man called police at about 11:30 a.m. to report “disturbing Facebook posts” that read like a “goodbye message,” Fargo police Lt. Mike Mitchell said.
Police went to the man’s apartment at 315 30th Ave. N. to check on his welfare and announced themselves, then heard a gunshot, Mitchell said. The officers backed away and waited for a SWAT team and negotiators to arrive.
The SWAT team deployed a robot and found the dead male inside the apartment with what police what police believe is a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Negotiators were “never able to establish … contact with the person in the residence,” Mitchell said. The man’s name and age were not released.
Leeann Strait, a neighbor down the hall from the man, said she had never seen him or talked to him and none of the neighbors had, either. “He’s been there. He hides in there. He’s pretty much a recluse.”
But they talked about him a lot, mostly about how the police were always looking for him and how he never answered. “It’s very scary,” Strait said. “You have the sheriff there banging, banging, banging and looking in the back window.
“I know the police were here at 4 o’clock one morning,” she said with a weary tone. “I don’t know why, but it was because of him.”
She said police evacuated the first floor of the building Monday morning and allowed her to return by about 3:30 p.m.
Strait said she moved here from Boston and thought it’d be a lot safer. She said maybe she’ll move back when her lease is up.
