Police take armed suspect at Orlando Airport into custody

[May 31, 2017]    (Reuters) - An armed suspect in a hours-long standoff with police at a rental car area at Florida's Orlando International Airport on Tuesday pleaded with officers to shoot him before he was taken into custody without any shots being fired, Orlando police said.

Michael Pettigrew, 26, faces one count of aggravated assault with a firearm and will be kept in custody on a mental health hold, the Orlando Police Department said on Twitter.

Pettigrew pointed the gun at officers and said "shoot me, shoot me," the department said in a Twitter post.

No one was injured and no shots were fired during the incident, which occurred in the rental car area of one of the country's busiest airports, police said.

Live video showed dozens of police vehicles on the scene.

The airport serves about 42.6 million passengers a year and 35 commercial airlines have operations at the facility, according to the airport's website.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Brendan O'Brien; Editing by Sandra Maler, Leslie Adler and Michael Perry)

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