While America is on alert for gun violence, an armed standoff in Seaside ends without injury.

Just two days after the nation was rattled by a May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas – where the suspected shooter, only 18 years old, shot and killed 19 students and two teachers before being shot and killed by law enforcement officers – the local community got a reminder that the specter of gun violence is never far from home.

At around 7:50am May 26, a deputy from the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office arrived to an apartment complex on the 1100 block of San Pablo Avenue in Seaside to serve an eviction notice. According to Sheriff’s Cmdr. Derrel Simpson, the deputy had information from both the Monterey Police and his own department that the suspect – Vahe Ohanian, 57, a former Marine – had two weapons registered to his name, and had also emailed threats to the FBI with respect to Congressman Jimmy Panetta, and also that he would “carve as many pigs as I desire” and that he “would hunt down judges and execute them.”

When the deputy, who arrived in an unmarked car, saw Ohanian – who’d been given notice he would be evicted that morning – waiting on the balcony of his apartment, the officer doubled back to the Seaside Police Department and called his fellow deputies for backup.

When the deputies, four total, returned to the property at around 9am in one marked vehicle and another unmarked, Ohanian allegedly opened fire twice on the marked vehicle as a deputy was getting out of it, twice striking the windshield. Simpson says the gunshots sounded muffled, like they came from a suppressed weapon. Officers later learned the weapons in Ohanian’s possession at the time were actually BB guns – the one he fired at officers was an AR-15 replica.

“Once they got fired upon, they regrouped, and came up with a plan,” Simpson says. That included calling on the SWAT team.

The deputy serving the eviction, Simpson says, negotiated over the PA system of a patrol car for 90 minutes, and then a negotiating team from the Sheriff’s Office in an armored SWAT vehicle took over.

Meanwhile, Seaside Police helped evacuate the apartment complex while keeping residents and officers out of the potential line of fire. Seaside Acting Police Chief Nick Borges specifically names Officer Joe Rogish, who deployed a fire ladder to get residents out from the second story.

A few hours later, Ohanian surrendered peacefully, with no further shots fired.

Ohanian was arraigned May 31 on three felony charges of assault with a deadly weapon on a peace officer, one felony charge of resisting an executive officer, and a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest or delaying an officer. Ohanian pleaded not guilty and his bail was set at $1 million.

He remains in custody.

Monterey Peninsula Unified School District Superintendent PK Diffenbaugh says the recent spate of gun violence, including the incident in Seaside, is especially tough on the mental health of MPUSD staff and students, given the recent gun violence wracking the nation. “It’s very sad, I think our kids are growing up in a country [that] is indirectly communicating to them that they may be collateral damage,” he says. “I don’t know what it’s going to take, honestly.”