Armed elderly woman arrested after 22-hour standoff in California

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - An elderly woman who barricaded herself in a Los Angeles-area mobile home and fired at a police robot was taken into custody on Friday after a 22-hour standoff, police said. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said in a statement the incident began before dawn on Thursday when a woman in a mobile home park in Topanga, near Los Angeles, reported having a medical emergency. She pulled out a gun when firefighters and sheriff's deputies arrived, authorities said. Deputies retreated to call for backup and the nearby community was evacuated, the department statement said. The woman, who was not identified, barricaded herself in the park and authorities sought to have her surrender, but to no avail. The woman's motives were not immediately clear. Video footage on local media during the standoff showed numerous police and SWAT vehicles lining the street, along with what appeared to be an armored forklift. At one point, police sent in a robot to make contact with the woman but she shot at it. She was taken into custody early on Friday, ending a standoff that had lasted 22 hours, the Sheriff's Department said in a statement that did not explain how it ended. The woman was taken to a hospital for medical treatment and no sheriff's deputies were injured in the confrontation, the statement said. (Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Bill Trott)