Seven-Hour Standoff
Results in Arrest
By M. D. Drysdale

A tense standoff between police and the resident of a Maple Street apartment lasted seven hours yesterday morning before the resident, Stacey Colson, was talked into surrendering peacefully.

Colson had told officers he would shoot himself if they tried to enter the second-floor apartment and arrest him. A section of the street was closed and a growing force of state and local policemen gathered, starting at 3 a.m. and ending only when Colson walked out the door of 13 Maple Street at 10:05 a.m.

He was immediately taken into custody.

Events began, according to Randolph Police Chief James Krakowiecki, at 2:55 a.m. with a call from a woman who told officer James Beraldi that Colson had broken a restraining order and had gone to her house on Dewey Drive, forced entry into the home and raped her at gunpoint.

The restraining order had been put in place just two days before.

As police were preparing to respond, Krakowiecki said, they received a call from Colson himself, who said he had barricaded himself in his upstairs apartment at 13 Maple St. and had a gun to his head. He would shoot himself if anyone came to get him out, he told police.

He did not threaten to shoot anyone else at that point, the chief said. Later, however, believing the victim was at the hospital, he threatened to go there and to "shoot anybody who was in his way," the chief said.

The police already had the premises securely covered, but the hospital was locked down for about three hours as a precaution.

Notified by Beraldi, Krakowiecki called in the entire seven-member police force and also put in a call to the State Police, asking for its Special Entry Team, which is trained in such situations. The four-person team arrived from all over the state, he said.

Meanwhile, setting up a command center in the hospital lobby, police and others opened a telephone line and began to talk to Colson, a series of conversations that would last seven hours.

"I talked for over an hour," Krakowiecki said, and others joined the effort, including Fire Chief Jay Collette, Officer Emile Fredette, and Colson’s mother and another relative.

"We all tried to get him to do the right thing," he said. "Our hearts were for a safe ending. I did a lot of praying this morning."

A tense time came when the lights came on in the lower apartment, where a young couple and two children lived. Krakowiecki received assurances from Colson that police would be allowed to go into the house to get the family out, and three officers accomplished that task about 6 a.m.

After that, it was more talk.

"We just kept him talking and eventually he started to listen," the chief said.

It was the state police negotiator who eventually convinced the Randolph man to put down his gun, raise his hands, and come out of the building.

Colson, who for about a year has worked for the town of Randolph, was scheduled to be arraigned in Orange County District Court yesterday afternoon.

Charges will include unlawful entry, aggravated sexual assault with a weapon, violating a restraining order, unlawful trespass, unlawful restraint, and burglary.

After a tense day that began at 3 a.m., Krakowiecki and his officers were exhausted by mid-afternoon. The chief was lavish with his praise for the response of the officers.

"We have a safe result," he said. "And they’re the ones to thank."