SAN ANTONIO – Alarm clocks and wakeup calls took a back seat to loudspeaker announcements and the sound of pepper spray being fired into several rooms at a Northeast Side motel early Thursday morning.
Guests at the Motel 6, located near Interstate 35 and Rittiman Road, woke up to the commotion, which began with one man waving down a San Antonio police officer around 4 a.m.
“The victim informed the officer that he had been robbed and assaulted,” said Ximena Alvarez, a public relations manager for the San Antonio Police Department.
Alvarez said the man was bleeding from his head and body when the officer contacted him.
At some point later, police determined that the suspects in the robbery and assault were also at the motel, spread across at least two other rooms.
Officers called in a SWAT team after having no luck making contact with anyone in the rooms.
A negotiator could be heard making announcements over a loudspeaker, telling people inside the targeted rooms that they were surrounded and should come out peacefully.
A SWAT officer also fired tear gas into the rooms from atop a truck.
Jaelynnee Dorsey said she was inside one of the rooms at the time.
“I’m thinking it’s somebody shooting at us,” she said. “Nah, it’s the cops, and they’re talking about, ‘Come out. Come out.’”
“(The pepper spray) was painful,” Dorsey said. “I feel like I was gonna die, like, I could not breathe.”
Dorsey and several other people eventually were led out of the rooms in handcuffs. However, she spoke to KSAT 12 News after she was released.
“They just wanted to ask me questions about, like, everybody over here at ‘the 6.’ But I don’t know nobody over here, so they just let me go,” Dorsey said.
Police were not able to offer an exact number of people who were taken into custody. However, they later reported that only two of them, a man and woman, were arrested on unspecified charges.
During the standoff, at least one woman mentioned evacuating from her room.
Other people seemed to be unaware of what was happening and carried on with their usual routines, despite the heavy police presence.
Police at the motel, though, are not exactly an unusual sight.
Data from SAPD shows officers were called to the property more than 150 times since last October for crimes that include robberies, disturbances and shootings.
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