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Temple police surround a house in the 2100 block of South 49th Street where a suspect was holed up with a shotgun. Witnesses said the man threatened his estranged wife at a bar across town. Rebekah Workman/Telegram

Although a standoff between police and a gunman ended peacefully in South Temple on Wednesday afternoon, the story began in a small tavern across town in which both quick feet and quick thinking helped a woman escape from a shotgun-toting man.

According to Temple police, after three hours of negotiations with a SWAT and crisis team, a 31-year-old man surrendered to them from a house in the 2100 block of South 49th Street. He is being held in Bell County Jail.

Witnesses said the man entered the bar through the back door looking for his estranged wife.

Rickie Page, a regular patron at the Fifth Wheel bar, a nondescript steel building on the corner of Avenue M and Third Street, was sitting at a corner table when the man arrived.

“He came in three times; to drink a beer, to threaten her - and with a rifle,” Page said.

Page said when the suspect entered the third time, he used the back door, but the woman - who is a bartender - had fled out the front.

“She ran to a friend’s house to call police,” Page said.

Melinda Whitney said she was taking a shower when the panicked woman arrived.

“She was pounding on the door, yelling,” Ms. Whitney said, saying to let her in because the man was chasing her with a shotgun.

Whitney said she huddled with the woman in the bathroom, while the gunman shot the lock off the back door and kicked it open. She said police later found two shotgun shells near the rear stoop.

With the gunman now inside, Ms. Whitney said her stepfather, who also lives in the house, told the man that the woman had left.

The gunman next surfaced at a house across town.

“When officers arrived, they observed the suspect at the front door of the residence with a shotgun in his possession,” Sgt. Allen Teston said.

Up to 30 police, EMS and other emergency crew members were on the scene at one time. Police closed the 49th Street in front of the house and cordoned several square blocks. Teston said they did not evacuate anyone, but they were not allowing people who lived within the area to return home until the crisis was resolved.

Back at the Fifth Wheel on Wednesday afternoon, patrons said the bar was a friendly place, where everyone looks after each other.

Page, the regular patron who is a 53-year-old disabled veteran, said the bartender who escaped earlier is “like a sister to me,” and often drives him around to town on personal errands.