Deputies dodge bullets, arrest man after standoff

By DUANE SHERRILL / Staff Reporter for the Southern Standard

Deputies Larry Terry, left, and Jody Cavanaugh pull Brett Perron to a patrol car following a three-hour standoff at a residence on Beersheba Highway Saturday afternoon. Perron reportedly tried to shoot his wife and then opened fire on deputies.

Standing brazenly on his porch, a machete pressed against his stomach, the man who shortly before had tried to kill his wife and had opened fire on deputies, threatened to end his own life.

However, for Brett Perron, the end was not to be as his three-hour standoff with lawmen ended with a bang, a flashbang fired by officers who then stormed the temporarily stunned suicidal suspect from the corner of his house.

“He don’t realize how lucky he is to be alive,” said Sheriff Jackie Matheny of Perron’s capture. “There’s not a lot of places where deputies would have set there and just let him shoot at them.”

The saga began to unfold around 3 p.m. Saturday when Perron’s wife of two years, Rosa Perron, returned home from grocery shopping to find something wrong with her husband. The couple lives on Beersheba Highway near its intersection with Safely Hollow.

“He came out and hit me in the head. He’s never hit me before. He’s always been a gentle person,” Mrs. Perron said following the standoff. “I think he was on something because this wasn’t like him.”

After being struck, Perron said she started to leave in her vehicle when her husband came outside with a rifle and started firing point blank at her through her windshield.

“I could hear the bullets come through the windshield at me,” Mrs. Perron said. “I thought I was going to die right there in the car.”

Mrs. Perron was able to get away, avoiding two bullet holes from her husband’s .22-caliber rifle in her windshield.

Fearing Mr. Perron was still inside and armed, lawmen set up around the house and used specially trained negotiators Bobby Pennington and John Chisam to talk with Perron. After talking to him on the loudspeaker of one of the patrol cars, the negotiators were able to get him to call dispatchers. However, the discourse broke down minutes later when Perron began firing out the front door at officers stationed directly across the highway on top of the hill. Lawmen held their fire despite at least five different incidents of firing on Perron’s part, most being six-round bursts.

Following several bursts of fire from Perron and a burst of tear gas from officers, lawmen were able to convince Perron to throw out his gun. However, after complying, Perron stepped out on his front porch with a machete, threatening to take his own life as he pushed it against his stomach.

With undetected sharp shooters hidden in the weeds only yards from Perron, an officer walked over Perron’s front yard and began talking to him. Meanwhile, the department’s entry team, which is trained in SWAT-style maneuvers, slowly crept around the side of Perron’s house from the back. Then, with Perron’s attention temporarily distracted by the officer in front of him, a flashbang was fired, stunning Perron. It took seconds for the entry team to swarm him on the porch and take him into custody.

“He was firing at my men,” Matheny said. “They’ll be a lot of charges coming. Like I said, he’s a real lucky man today.”