Baker City Police Chief Wyn Lohner said police believe the suspect in the Grove Street home they’ve surrounded this evening is John M. Guthrie Jr.

Guthrie, of Baker City, was charged in June 2010 with shooting his father twice in the head in a Baker City home.

The elder Guthrie survived that shooting.

John M. Guthrie, who was 38 at the time of the 2010 shooting, was convicted of assault in that case. Lohner said he does not know when Guthrie was released from prison.

A resident of the home at 2010 Grove St. that police are focusing said Guthrie arrived there this afternoon, and that there were guns in the home.

Kathy Taylor, who is renting the home at 2010 Grove St. where John M. Guthrie Jr. has been since this afternoon, said no one else is in the home as far as she knows.

Taylor said Guthrie, whom she has known since they were in school, has refused to answer calls to his cell phone, and there is no landline in the home.

She said Guthrie apparently is in the basement, which has only one entrance, by a flight of stairs.

“It wouldn’t be safe to try to go down there,” Taylor said.

She and her husband, James, have been living in the home. Kathy said she was at work when her brother, George Wesley, called to tell her that Guthrie, whom he knows, had come to the house and was looking for a gun that was kept there. Taylor, whose two children, ages 13 and 14, were also in the home, were taken out safely by Wesley, their uncle.

Taylor said they are all together this evening, and a police officer is with them.

Lohner recommends people avoid the area between Resort and Oak streets, and between Auburn and Campbell. The Northwest Regional SWAT team arrived about 6 p.m.