Between the concussive booms, clouds of stinging gas, flashing lights and the armed and armored SWAT members milling around in their front yards, Friday night was restless for a handful of Ooltewah residents.
On Saturday afternoon police tape still surrounded the yard of a two-story home in the 4000 block of East Freedom Circle. Three windows on the home's top floor had been smashed apart, the plastic blinds jutting outside at odd angles, while yellow evidence markers sat scattered over the front yard.
A SWAT standoff with one of the home's occupants, Jovian Kyndiah, 19, began at 1 a.m. and lasted through the night until he surrendered to authorities shortly after 6 a.m., the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office said in a news release. The body of a woman, dead from an apparent gunshot wound, was found inside.
Deputies originally responded to a report of an accidental shooting, but when they arrived Kyndiah had barricaded himself inside.
A SWAT team and negotiators tried to coax him out, but neighbors said the next few hours were tense.
"I thought they were going to have to storm the place because apparently he stopped talking," said Troy Hackett, who lives a few doors down the street. "Nothing like this has ever happened here."
Hackett said he woke up around 4 a.m. and looked outside to see clusters of police vehicles stretching down the block. He estimated deputies fired around 15 gas canisters into the house through the windows and a flashbang grenade.
"That lit up the whole yard," he said, adding that smoke was so dense at times he couldn't see his neighbors' homes.
Another neighbor who asked his name not be used said he didn't know the family well, but would say hello when he saw Jovian Kyndiah or his mother Iabika Kyndiah, who he said went by "Bika."
"They were good people," he said. "They were workers."
Bika Kyndiah and her husband, Stephen Elson, bought the house in the spring of 2014, county property records show. The neighbor said Elson died after a heart attack last year.
He said the couple were working on renovating the house when Elson ran out of the basement and got in his car, unable to breathe. Elson refused the neighbor's offer to take him to the hospital, but a family relative told him two days later that Elson had died.
The entire time he was watching the night's events from his front door, the neighbor said, he was sad for Jovian Kyndiah, who occasionally went by "Joe."
"I felt so sorry for him. It was a long standoff," he said. "It was pitiful."
The neighbor had only positive things to say about the family, saying he didn't know Jovian Kyndiah well but had never had problems with the young man.
"For what few times I met him and saw him, he was cordial," he said.
Hackett agreed, saying the worst thing he could remember about being neighbors with the family was that Jovian and his friends were a little loud from time to time.
"But so was I at that age," he said. "I just hope he didn't ruin the rest of his life."
Jovian Kyndiah is being held with pending charges related to allegedly firing a weapon at four sheriff's deputies. The name of the deceased woman will be released after her next of kin is notified, the sheriff's release said.
Contact staff writer Emmett Gienapp at egienapp@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6731. Follow on Twitter @emmettgienapp.