By STEVE GARBACZ

sgarbacz@kpcmedia.com

KENDALLVILLE — The shooter who opened fire at Drake Terrace Apartments and engaged in a standoff with police lasting more than 10 hours is dead.

The suspect died shortly after being taken into custody while receiving medical treatment, Indiana State Police said. At about 8:30 p.m. Thursday, the Indiana State Police shared that the Noble County Coroner has positively identified the deceased as Michael P. Emmons, 60, of Kendallville. Family members have been notified.

“They got him about 6:05 a.m., they took him into custody, they took him out to an ambulance and started working on him, he had injuries,” Indiana State Police Fort Wayne Post Public Information Officer Brian Walker said. “But he ended up succumbing to his injuries while he was in the ambulance.”

Police were on scene all night after first responding to the shooting incident just after 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. The suspect fired hundreds of rounds from his second-floor apartment from what police described as a “high-powered rifle” for about an hour-long period ending around 9 p.m. before the situation calmed.

The suspect was firing at officers as well as shooting randomly out of the building, police said.

After the shooting ended, SWAT teams began an hours-long process of slowly working their way into the building to remove the barricaded suspect, working to remove parts of the building and confirm his location and status.

“The slow, continuous process was pinpointing his location,” Walker said. “And initially there wasn’t a lot of movement out of him. Luckily they took their time because he was actually still alive and he started moving around on them again and hiding and moving from room to room.”

“That was a slow process trying to get him to surrender. There was no need — there was nobody else in the apartment — he was the only one and he was not engaging them in gunfire any more,” Walker said.

Fort Wayne Police Department SWAT officers made entry shortly after 6 a.m. and were able to take the suspect into custody. He did not voluntarily leave the apartment and surrender to police and Walker said his injuries left him in very poor physical condition by the time he was apprehended.