SUSPECTED GUNMAN AND SON FOUND DEAD AFTER OHIO STANDOFF

BRUNSWICK, OHIO -- A two-day police standoff ended yesterday when officers stormed a house and found a suspected gunman and his 9-year-old son dead, police said.

The bodies of John M. Lekan, 54, and his son John Jr. were found about 1 p.m. in a bathroom. Lekan shot his son in the head and then shot himself in the head, police Chief Patrick Beyer said.

Police had taken Lekan's 49-year-old wife, Beverly, out of the house nearly three hours before her husband and son were found. Beverly Lekan, who is bedridden and suffers from multiple sclerosis, was taken to a Cleveland hospital with minor injuries.

The standoff began Friday afternoon when police were met by gunfire when they went to the house to check on Beverly Lekan. Visiting health care workers had called police to complain about guns in the house.

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One officer was shot, and two more were wounded later when police attempted to storm the one-story frame house in this town just outside Cleveland. One officer was treated; the two others remained hospitalized yesterday.

Sgt. Nick Solar, the chief police negotiator, said he talked to Lekan three or four times Friday and early Saturday, the last time police spoke with him.

"He indicated to me he was born a free man and he intended to die a free man," Solar said. "He also indicated to me that his home was his castle and nobody was going to take either he or anybody else out of his castle."

Beverly Lekan told the Plain Dealer over the phone Friday that her husband became enraged when the health care workers asked that he keep his guns out of sight.

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