LINCOLN, Maine — A 22-hour armed standoff with police ended Tuesday with the surrender of a local man wanted for the alleged sexual assault of two teenagers, police said Tuesday.
William Bradbury, 56, of Lincoln, barricaded himself in a house on Mohawk Road with a 9mm handgun after Lincoln police Sgt. John Walsh and Detective Mark Fucile arrived at 11 a.m. Monday to interview him and to serve a protective order, said Dan Summers, Lincoln’s public safety director.
“The scene quickly soured,” Summers said.
The officers and a woman who lived there fled and called state police. The standoff blocked a section of Route 2, one of Lincoln’s busiest streets, with roadblocks at the Knights of Columbus building and a local cement factor.
Bradbury surrendered at 9:20 a.m. on Tuesday after state police spent the night on the phone with him. An amateur video provided to the Bangor Daily News by an eyewitness who asked not to be identified shows Bradbury speaking on a cellphone as he slowly emerges from his home, lifts his shirt to police ― apparently to show that he isn’t carrying a weapon ― turns around and slowly backs toward an armored state police van, where three armed and body-armored police push him to the ground and handcuff him.
Tactical team members had tried to end the standoff by shooting tear gas shells through windows and forcing their way into the house about seven hours earlier, said Summers.
“They had been on the phone with him all night and into the morning until he surrendered,” Summers said Tuesday during a press conference. “It was a very easy [or unthreatening] conversation. There was no hollering, no demands being made, other than the fact that we were trying to convince him to exit the residence.”
The alleged assaults of the girls, ages 14 and 15, occurred over a 1½ year period, police said. Bradbury’s court date on the charges — two counts of Class C sexual abuse of a minor and a civil charge, creating a police standoff — was not available on Tuesday.
Bradbury’s arrest was the eighth incident involving standoffs with Maine police since January and the sixth that ended peacefully. Police shot and killed 54-year-old Mark Ellis in Orrington on June 6 and Belfast resident 71-year-old Dennis Ward died from complications from a Taser shock administered on May 30.
According to the Maine State Bureau of Identification, Bradbury has a criminal record of misdemeanors, of which the most recent is a charge of Class D criminal mischief in Portland Superior Court in 1996. He served 60 days.
Neighbors took the news of the standoff calmly. Fernand St. Pierre of Lincoln said he lives three or four houses from the besieged house. The 80-year-old retired store owner, who said he only knew his neighbor vaguely, stayed for bingo at the Knights of Columbus until 9 p.m. before staying with friends overnight.
Close to a dozen houses were evacuated.
Police searched the Route 2 house for more weapons and other evidence. The results of the search were not available on Tuesday afternoon.