A Newton County man remains in jail after a three-hour standoff with deputies Monday morning.

Rickey L. Sarazin, 44, of 11427 Crow Road in Seneca, remains in custody in lieu of $250,000 bond in connection with an assault Sunday.

According to Newton County Sheriff Ken Copeland, deputies received a call Sunday from a woman at the residence, who said her boyfriend had assaulted her with a 2 by 4. When officers arrived, Copeland said, they saw a man carrying a shotgun run out the backdoor of the home into a wooded area. They were unable to find him, Copeland said, and the woman spent the night at a different location.

On Monday morning, the woman called again and said her boyfriend had been making threatening telephone calls to her.

“He said he was going to kill her and kill her child,” Copeland said.

Patrol officers went to the home at 10:20 a.m. Monday to serve a warrant for Sarazin’s arrest on a charge of second-degree domestic assault, a Class C felony. Copeland said the man barricaded himself inside the home, and would not answer calls to come out issued by deputies and members of the department’s special response team on both a public address system and by telephone.

“We administered tear gas and he still didn’t come out,” the sheriff said. “After a while, we sent the SRT in to check the interior and they didn’t find him.”

A second sweep of the home revealed the presence of a trap door in the floor. A table with fishing line attached to one of the legs was over the trap door. Copeland said the man was able to drop through the door, then use the fishing line to pull the table over it to conceal the opening.

Once the door was located, officers opened it and fired tear gas into the home’s crawl space. The man, later identified as Sarazin, came out soon afterward and was taken into custody at about 1:30 p.m. Monday.

“He bragged to people how he looked forward to a confrontation with police,” Copeland said. “All of the doors were heavily barricaded and he had closed circuit television all over, so he could see who was coming.”

Copeland said the man was not armed when he surrendered to deputies, but there were several weapons present in the household. There was no exit from the crawl space.

“Fortunately, we did not have a firefight,” the sheriff said. “We did find a stolen car in the back yard, so there will possibly be other charges.”

Sarazin also faces seven misdemeanor warrants out of Joplin, the sheriff added.