Printable VersionA phone call to law enforcement Thursday morning falsely claiming that five people were shot with a “high-powered rifle” ended with one arrest after a short standoff in a neighborhood burrowed on the outskirts of the southern city limits.
 A Mohave County Sheriff’s deputy leaves the trailer in which 56-year-old Gregory Marvin Bergstrom had barricaded himself and prompted a short standoff Thursday morning. Jackie Leatherman/News-Herald Photo. |
Moments before police arrived on scene — shortly after the 8:31 a.m. call — 64-year-old neighbor Carole Richardson said Bergstrom was pounding on her door screaming, “Give me an AK-47! I’ll get you, Carole.”
“The guy is very volatile,” Richardson said. “You just don’t know. It’s like a time bomb.”
Bergstrom then barricaded himself into his trailer once officers arrived “yelling his wife is being killed,” said MCSO Spokeswoman Trish Carter. Once inside his trailer, he wouldn’t let officers in.
“At this point, we don’t know what we are dealing with,” Carter said.
Fourteen officers had weapons aimed at the trailer before their forced entry, but once inside the home, law enforcement discovered Bergstrom was the only one there.
No one was injured or killed during the roughly one-hour incident. No shots were ever fired and no weapons were found in the trailer.
“We had a negotiator trying to work with him,” Carter said. “(But) when you have someone who is not saying anything (on the phone) or keeps hanging up on you, it makes it a little difficult.”
Bergstrom cooperated once officers gained entry and threatened to release the law enforcement K-9, Carter said.
Richardson said she has lived in Havasu since 1995, and she remembers Bergstrom moving in next door about seven years ago. He lives there alone, but has local family, she said.
Homes along the county’s Gold Springs Road range from beautiful stucco homes to dilapidated trailers. The hilly road rises out of Lakeside Drive and dead ends into the desert. Only a horse-crossing traffic sign and a 25-mph speed limit sign can be seen from Lakeside Drive before the road ducks down to a small valley where Bergstrom’s trailer sits, right next to a pen of horses.
Richardson said she had to call police when he first moved in because he would come over to her property and get violent.
She had to place another 911 call Thursday morning — only the second time she has “seen the violent side come out, and it’s not a pretty sight.”
She said his un-welcomed visits to her property have been “sporadic” throughout the years.
“He keeps himself holed up,” she said. “Sometimes he’ll come out and wander around and then go back in. I don’t know.”
She said moments after her Thursday call, she “had all kinds of people around my trailer with rifles.”
“I didn’t hear any gunshots and that would have been a clue, and I would have hit the deck,” she said. But otherwise Richardson just thought the events unfolding in her neighbor’s yard were “better than” watching “The Real Housewives of Orange County.”
Neighbors flocked to their yards Thursday morning along Lakeside Drive as patrol car after patrol car whizzed past their houses to turn the corner onto Gold Springs Road.
More than a dozen law enforcement vehicles and a helicopter were dispatched to the scene.
Married couple Dennis and Laurie Puryear were having their ritual morning cup of coffee Thursday morning on the back porch of their Lakeside Drive home — overlooking the Gold Springs Road hill that sunk into the standoff.
“Twenty cop cars went down that street, all with their sirens,” 47-year-old Laurie said. “We hopped in the truck and just jammed down the street (to see what was going on and saw) guns drawn and (cops) spreading around the house. You don’t see anything this big. A couple of sirens here or there, but nothing like this.”
“It looked pretty intense, that’s for sure,” 52-year-old Dennis said. “They all had their shotguns out. I’ve never seen anything like that in Havasu before. That’s for sure.”
Carter confirmed this wasn’t the first run in with Bergstrom.
MCSO deputies responded to his home on Jan. 13 and Jan. 15 after he called in reporting “a bunch of Hells Angels” with guns had surrounded his trailer, Carter said.
She said deputies found no supporting evidence after arriving on scene.
Bergstrom was also arrested in June 2002 on three driving while intoxicated charges, Carter said.
Lake Havasu City Police Department Sgt. Joe Harrold said police responded to Havasu Regional Medical Center about two weeks ago when Bergstrom “locked himself in a bathroom.” Harold said Bergstrom eventually came out voluntarily.
LHCPD and Lake Havasu Fire Department served as backup for Thursday’s incident.
LHCPD arrested Bergstrom in May 2005 on criminal damage charges linked to a damage door and doorframe at a family member’s residence, Harrold said.
City Magistrate Hon. Clyde Andress in Lake Havasu Justice Court arraigned Bergstrom on three misdemeanor charges Thursday stemming from the morning standoff incident.
Bergstrom, being held on a $75,000 bond, now faces falsely reporting to law enforcement, disorderly conduct and trespassing.
Bergstrom’s next court appearance will be a bond review hearing at 9 a.m. Feb. 9 in Andress’s courtroom, according to court staff.
Carter said it would be up to the judge to determine if further psychiatric evaluation is needed.
“Bottom line: He committed a crime,” Carter said. “(Officers) are going to explain to the judge the prior history we’ve had with the subject. A judge can direct someone for evaluation and treatment. That’s what we are hoping for.”
Carter said officers reported “clutter and/or debris about four feet high and basically a walkway through” the trailer.
Richardson said she knew that at one point Bergstrom had written scriptures in permanent marker all over the inside of his trailer walls; however, neither MCSO or LHCPD could confirm that detail.
“The guy basically is a recluse,” Richardson said. “The guy definitely needs help. I’m not a doctor. I don’t know, but anybody with common sense could see that.”
Richardson unlocked her security screen of her front door and stepped outside to her patio around 11 a.m. Thursday.
The morning excitement was over, leaving only the familiar stillness of her neighborhood behind.
“Basically, it’s a real nice neighborhood out here,” she said. “It’s quiet, except for…”
Richardson looked across her property line marked by struggling citrus trees.
Rust stained window coverings pressed against the interior glass of her neighbor’s windows, and now jagged edges surrounded the hole of the broken front door window of the cream-colored trailer sitting at 4041 Gold Springs Road.
You may contact the reporter at jleatherman@havasunews.com
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