Police come up empty-handed after downtown manhunt

If you were anywhere near downtown yesterday afternoon, chances are you noticed the scores of police cars and helicopters in the area — and if you checked out the news to see what was going on, chances are you found out it was a manhunt at the Exxon Mobil parking garage. The whole thing started at about 3 p.m. at UH-Downtown's Daly Street parking lot, where two men took a 1997 white Honda Civic at gunpoint. They headed south along Milam Street, pursued by a UHD police car; HPD officers on Main Street then joined the chase. At about 3:10 p.m., the men crashed the Civic through a fence and into a couple of vehicles parked in a lot at Milam and Bell — and from there, the guys ran into the nearby Exxon Mobil garage.

Police and the SWAT team arrived and cordoned off the area, re-routing traffic and Metro buses. Though security cameras caught images of the men entering the garage, officers didn't find them after looking at "every inch" of the six-story building during a two-and-a-half-hour search, HPD spokesman Sgt. Nate McDuell said.

HouStoned — from its headquarters across the street from the Exxon garage — picked up on the action at around 4:20 p.m., following up with photos, photos and even a dramatic enactment. Nice!

The two suspects, one of whom was carrying a stainless revolver, are still at large. An Exxon Mobil employee told the Chronicle one of the men was wearing a dark blue shirt and the other was in a white shirt, but there apparently weren't any more detailed descriptions.