Police kill 107-year-old suspect in home shootout

A 107-year-old man was killed in a shootout with police, after he held two people at gunpoint in the US state of Arkansas, authorities said.

Officers were called to a home in the city of Pine Bluff following reports that the man, named as Monroe Isadore, was threatening the pair with a gun.

They were brought to safety before police tried to arrest the suspect.

US media has reported that the violence began when Mr Isadore's daughter approached him about moving house.

Pauline Lewis, who lived with Mr Isadore and accompanied his daughter on Saturday when she asked him to consider moving to an apartment, said he became increasingly confused and irate and began brandishing a hand gun.

"He was very angry. He got hostile. He was gonna kill somebody," Pauline Lewis told KTHV.

Officials said they had tried to negotiate with Mr Isadore but were forced to call reinforcements after he shot at them through the closed bedroom door.

During the course of the negotiations a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team was able to determine that he was armed with a handgun by inserting a camera into the room where he was holed up.

When the negotiations broke down, SWAT officers threw gas into the room and tried to open the door, police say.

But the centenarian is said to have fired at the officers as they entered the room. Officers returned fire, killing him, according to the reports confirmed by police.

No police were injured in the incident.

The coroner later confirmed Mr Isadore's age.

Pine Bluff is a city of about 50,000 people, located in the heart of a rich agricultural area in the Arkansas River Basin.

It has been repeatedly ranked by research and publishing company Morgan Quitno Press as one of the most dangerous metropolitan areas in the US and is included on the Forbes list of America's 10 most impoverished cities.

Figures released by the US Census Bureau in 2010 show that there were around 53,000 people over 100 years old in the country, and only 8% of them were older than 104.

-BBC