Many visitors staying at the Happy Holiday motel on 507 North Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach were woken up by law enforcement in the early morning and told to leave as there was a suspect in the building who had barricaded himself in.
Myrtle Beach police were negotiating with the suspect who was in a room on the second floor of the motel.
The negotiation lasted several hours as bystanders viewed the interaction from multiple vantage points. People staying at the motel were allowed back inside at about 10:30 a.m..
One man from North Carolina, Patrick Lail, was staying at the motel in room 311 and was able to see all the action and took a video of police making a forceful entry into the motel room at about 10:30 a.m..
Lail told The Sun News that he had even spoken with the suspect earlier that morning before police showed up. He said he was returning to the motel from a nearby restaurant when the suspect approached him.
“He told me his girl had his money and his phone. ‘My girl has all my weed, all my money,’ he told me. He called the police from my phone and I guess it backfired on him because they found out there was a warrant for his arrest,” Lail said. “He texted his girl at 5:03 a.m. on my phone saying he would call the police on her for stealing his stuff.”
Tom Vest, a public information for the Myrtle Beach Police Department confirmed that there was a warrant for the suspect’s arrest. The suspect’s name and charges have not been released yet, as of about 2 p.m. today.
At about 5:30 a.m., according to Lail, police showed up and the suspect was tackled in the median in front of the motel before the suspect entered the motel.
“He bolted,” Lail said when describing how the suspect ran away from an officer after being tackled. The suspect then entered the motel. It is not clear if the suspect was a guest at the motel.
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