A gunman and hostage-taker is in custody after a five-hour standoff with the SWAT team in a Clifton neighborhood Sunday.

At about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, the decision was made to oust the man from the house he holed up in on Jackson St.

Gas canisters were shot into the home. After a few minutes, the man emerged, smoking a cigarette. At first he complied with officers by slowly walking backwards towards them, but then began acting erratically and walking back inside. Armed SWAT team members pursued him and tasered him, taking him into custody without injury.

The sequence of events began just before noon, when the man allegedly brandished a shotgun at a Bradley Sinclair gas station near 32 Road. He then ran from the gas station and invaded an occupied home a block away.

News Channel 5 spoke with the hostages moments after they escaped.

"He was just freaking out, and asking us for car keys," Levi Costopoulos, who lives in the house, said. "He said he would kill us if we tried to call the police on our cell phones."

Costopoulos says he was hanging out with friends in the living room when they heard a knock at the door. One of his friends went to answer it, and ran back into the room, telling them that it was someone with a gun.

"You've run the scenario through your head so many times about what you would do in that situation, but then it actually happens," Costopoulos said. "When you have a 12-gauge shotgun in your face, your attitude kind of changes."

Costopoulos says the man told them,"Sorry to do this. It's just one of those days."

Costopoulos says the hostage took one of his friends as collateral when he went toward the front of the house to retrieve their car keys.

"He told us if we tried to run, he would kill him," Costopoulus said.

But then, according to Costopoulus, the gunman caught sight of a Colorado State Trooper coming up the street and retreated back deeper into the house, leaving all of them behind. They saw their chance and exited the house.

At one point during negotiations, the man tossed his shotgun outside, but still had access to other weapons that were in the house.

Over the course of five hours, multiple shots were fired from the house at deputies, but the SWAT team remained in place and did not storm the house.

"I can't say that it's a happy ending, but it's definitely the kind of ending we're satisfied with," Mesa Co. Sheriff's Office spokesperson Lisa McCammon. "Nobody was injured, and the man was taken into custody."