Hay River (Sep 13/04) - A shotgun-toting man was arrested in a barricaded Hay River home last week without a shot being fired.

At 8:40 a.m. on Sept. 9, RCMP received a tip that Kenneth Tyrone Laliberte, a 33-year-old Hay River man wanted in connection with an alleged assault four days earlier, was in a West Channel residence.

Police were at the home by 9 a.m., only to find the locks had been tampered with and furniture placed against the inside of the doors.

They managed to get the locks undone and forced in the doors.

Unsure if anyone was still in the home, three Mounties entered with guns drawn and found a man armed with a loaded sawed-off .410 calibre shotgun.

"If we had known he was in there and armed, we would have called our emergency response team," says Cpl. Jim Forsey, who participated in the arrest.

The man was holding the weapon but never pointed it at police and was arrested without further incident, Forsey says. No one else was in the home, where the man had once lived.

Forsey was relieved no one was injured in the arrest.

"It's always OK when we all get to go home at the end of the day. That's including him, too," the officer said.

Laliberte faces charges of assault, two counts of breach of an undertaking, one count of being unlawfully in a dwelling and one count of dangerous use of a firearm.

A Justice of the Peace remanded Laliberte to custody until a Territorial Court appearance on Oct. 12.