A murder suspect in Boston dove out a 12th-floor window to escape cops and was left dangling by his underwear after police arrived at the apartment and found a corpse inside.
Cops respond to well-being call and find a dead body
Around 8:08 PM on Sunday, Police in Boston, Massachusetts, responded to a well-being call in the Roxbury neighborhood. When officers arrived at the apartment, they entered the unit and found a corpse, Fox reported.
The dead man was identified as 43-year-old Jose Aponte, to whom the apartment belonged, the New York Post reported.
Cops were tipped off after someone had sent a text to Aponte’s boss calling in sick, but in a writing style that did not match Aponte’s usual manner, NBC Boston reported.
Next, a SWAT team “made verbal contact” with a second person who was inside the apartment. However, officers were met with a “physical threat.”
“When police got there, they found the resident of the apartment deceased in the apartment with significant signs of physical trauma,” a prosecutor later said at the suspect’s arraignment hearing. “[The suspect] was farther back in the apartment.”
“[The suspect] had moved things to obscure himself,” the prosecutor continued explaining. “They [police] called out to him, asked him if he had any weapons, and his response was ‘Come and find out.”
Suspect dives out 12th-floor window to escape cops, left dangling by underwear
The suspect then tried to escape police by diving out of a window of the 12th-floor apartment. However, the suspect’s own underwear foiled his escape.
When the suspect jumped out the window, he got “caught up” by his underwear, which had snagged “on the window handle,” WCVB reported. According to the police report, “the suspect was hanging upside down, outside of the window, being held on by only his underwear.” Officers then went down to the 11th floor, where they were able to pull the suspect through a window below.
The suspect was then taken to a local hospital, where he was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
Suspect identified, had similar incident with SWAT in 2017
The suspect was identified as 37-year-old Michael Perry. He was charged with assault by means of a dangerous weapon and murder.
Perry has been in a similar situation with a SWAT team before. In 2017, a SWAT team arrested him after he had attacked another man in a Boston hotel, and similarly, he tried to escape police by jumping from a window onto an awning below, the Post reported.
Officials say an investigation into the incident is ongoing. Authorities have not yet commented on the cause of Aponte’s death or what relationship Perry had with the alleged victim.
