photo by: Lawrence Police Department

A Lawrence police officer enters an apartment on 22nd Street to help a family who had barricaded themselves inside in this body camera footage from Aug. 22, 2024.

After a family barricaded themselves in a room to get away from a man with a knife early Wednesday morning, Lawrence police helped them escape and took the man into custody, according to the police department’s social media.

The Lawrence Police Department posted that just before 3 a.m. Wednesday, officers were dispatched to an apartment in the 3100 block of 22nd Street after the family called 911. That is the site of the Peppertree apartment complex.

When officers arrived on the scene, the post said, they tried to get in through the front door, then went around to the back side of the building. Through a window there, the officers could see the family — a man, a baby and a woman who had her entire body pressed against a door. The family appeared to be “in a state of panic,” the post said.

Officers motioned to the man to open the window, but he couldn’t, and they then broke the window and helped the family climb out.

After that, the officers used the family’s key to enter the apartment, according to the post, and found a man with a knife inside. When he refused to drop his weapon, an officer used a Taser on him; he was taken into custody and then taken to the hospital as a precaution.

The family told police that they had just met the man that evening, the post said; it did not provide any other information about how they met the man.

Douglas County Jail booking logs show that Juan Carlos Villegas, 33, of Lawrence, was arrested at 3100 W. 22nd St. on suspicion of aggravated assault, intimidation of a witness, criminal trespass and interference with law enforcement. He was still in custody as of Wednesday afternoon.

The post said one officer went to the hospital and received stitches for a hand injury after the incident; it didn’t say how the officer was injured.