A man jailed in southeast Iowa is accused of holding his own mother against her will, beating and threatening her for two days this week. Lee County Sheriff Dave Ireland says they learned about it after the woman got away and fled to a neighbor’s home. She told them her son, Brad Yeager, had held her as a hostage in her home the last couple of days and had been physically assaulting her as well as threatening her with a weapon. That was about ten Tuesday morning, and the woman told deputies she’d been able to escape when Yeager left the house to run errands. By then Fort Madison police had come to help, as well as deputies from neighboring Des Moines County, the Iowa State Patrol and the Fort Madison prison’s CIRT Team (Crisis Intervention Response Team). He says when the first officer was arrived, Yeager was spotted returning to the home, but they also learned he had a weapon and probably more than one. So they tried phoning him from a neighbor’s house and calling him over a loudspeaker. There was no response, so Sheriff Ireland says finally the officers threw a “flash bomb” to distract the man. After a two-hour standoff, the officers forced their way in through a garage door and into the home, then searched the home till they found Yeager in the basement hiding behind a water heater. He was arrested without incident. The man had been living in the home for a few days before the standoff. He’d been living with his mother for the last two weeks, officers were told, after recently returning from California. Yeager was charged with assault causing injury and false imprisonment. At an initial court appearance this (Wednesday) morning a charge of harassment was added, and Yeager’s bond was raised from ten to 30-thousand dollars.
