Police have charged both a man and woman, believed to be the man’s hostage, involved in a dramatic standoff with police that only ended after heavily armed officers stormed an apartment. Seized in the house was a makeshift claw resembling those attached to the Marvel Comics character Wolverine.

According to a police source, officers from the 52nd Precinct were called to a second-floor apartment at 3180 Villa Ave., at just after 2 p.m. on Nov. 30.

“Upon arrival, the occupants refused to come out of the apartment and officers suspected someone was being held against their will inside of the location,” said the source.

 

Let’s start with the obvious. We did not arrest Wolverine.

This was just the latest find by officers from the @NYPD52Pct who responded to a domestic violence incident in the Bronx, showing us again that no call our cops respond to is ever routine. pic.twitter.com/Oy3gqR6v2P

— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) December 3, 2019

Responding officers reported hearing a single gunshot from inside the apartment, touching off the standoff that involved a small army of police from the NYPD’s heavily armed Emergency Services Unit (ESU), the Hostage Negotiating Team (HNT) and the Tactical Assistance Response Unit (TARU) that kept watch on the suspects during much of the standoff, until officers eventually stormed the apartment.

The street was quickly locked down as a crowd of angry residents began to gather at the corner of Villa Avenue and Van Cortlandt Avenue South, behind the crime scene tape. One Villa Avenue resident fumed, “I went out to the store for 10 minutes and now I’ve been stuck out here for two hours.”

TARU officers used fiber optic cameras to monitor the suspect from an apartment next door and watched him in the final moments of the standoff, as he smoked a cigarette and separated some dogs inside the apartment. Moments later an officer was heard over the police radio saying, “We’re in the room, we’re in the room.”

Minutes later police brought out suspect Anthony Ditta, 41, in handcuffs. Ditta—who was spotted joking with cops after his arrest—was charged with criminal possession of a firearm, reckless endangerment, assault, and criminal possession of marijuana.

Minutes after, police and paramedics wheeled out the alleged hostage and girlfriend of Ditta, who was strapped down to a gurney as she screamed at officers. She was transported to St. Barnabas Hospital for a psychological evaluation.

Police later identified her as Yelitza Garcia, 37, and she was later arrested and also charged with criminal possession of a firearm and assault.

Watching as Garcia, the apparent “hostage” was screaming at police, neighbor Elizabeth Perez, said, “You know, sometimes it’s hard to understand the human being. You don’t know what goes on inside their heads.”

Once the siege ended, NYPD’s Chief of Detectives Terence Monahan tweeted, “Tonight in the 52nd Precinct, officers responded to a domestic call on Villa Avenue that quickly escalated to a barricaded situation. Hats off to all involved that safely resolved the situation.”