Pinal County Deputies arrested a 19-year-old San Tan Valley man Tuesday night after the man was involved in a brief standoff with deputies, according to a news release from the Pinal County Sheriff's Office.
PCSO says they received a call on the incident at 5:45 p.m. from a home in the 700 block of west Desert Basin in San Tan Valley.
Operators could hear a woman screaming for help in the background but were not able to talk with the woman. Other 9-1-1 calls started to come in from neighbors who reported seeing a man behaving erratically by breaking windows and making threats. One neighbor told operators that the man had a rock in his hand and was yelling, "someone is going to die today," in the middle of the street.
Sheriff Paul Babeu of PCSO says deputies arrived on scene to find the man wearing a bloody shirt in the street armed with a rock and was showing an object in his waistband that deputies believed to be a pistol.
Deputies then confronted the man and was yelling at the deputies to shoot him. The man then started to pace back and forth in the street and walked in the direction of the home where he caused damage.
The man did not comply with the deputies commands to stop and drop the rock and repeated that he wanted to be shot. Before the man could get to the residence a deputy deployed his TASER which caused the man to drop the rock and fall down.
He was then taken into custody and after the man was arrested they found that the object was a pistol-style garden hose.
The man involved in the confrontation has been identified as 19-year-old Nathaniel Crites.
The victim, a 40-year-old woman, identified Nathaniel as her son. She said that he left the home after a verbal argument but came back a short time later.
The woman locked the doors because she was afraid and says Crties had been violent in the past. The woman was in the house with her 9-year-old son when she heard a loud noise at the front of the house which was followed by windows breaking and Crites kicking in the door.
Crites pushed the woman trying to get inside the house but was unsuccessful Crites then grabbed a rock from the landscape and threw it through a window which showered the victim with glass.
Crites was able to get into the house and into the kitchen where the victim believed he was trying to cut his wrists but could not see what he was doing.
The woman yelled at him to leave the house and after a short time he then walked out the front door.
Deputies say the 9-year-old was not harmed during the incident.
Crites was arrested for Assault, Disorderly Conduct and Criminal Damage.
