Fire hoses are most commonly associated in our minds with their intended function: putting out fires. But the simple fire hose, with its ability to direct extremely high-pressure sprays of water, has also been known in a more sinister aspect: as a weapon, used infamously against American civil rights marchers in the 1960s. But even this sinister quality to the common fire hose can have its positive side--as a Chinese fire brigade found out in 2007, when firemen used hoses to end a tense standoff between police and a suspected murderer.

The situation began on a spring day in 2007 when an unnamed man in the northeastern town of Shenyang apparently snapped from unknown pressures. The man murdered his mother-in-law and his teenaged nephew on a Friday at the end of March--potentially an isolated crime of passion, if a heinous one. That the situation and the man's emotions were spiraling out of control became obvious when an unrelated bicycle courier caretaker was murdered on April 7 of that year. The man's wife--fearing, perhaps rightly, that she would be next--took matters into her own hands and quickly called the police.

Local police cornered the murder suspect on the eighth floor of a local hospital. The man, armed, barricaded himself by a windowsill as police outside the room demanded his surrender. The man, pushed past the breaking point, argued that if the police didn't let him go, he would jump from the window, presumably to his death.

After two hours of negotiations, the police decided that they would allow the man to do just that--on their terms.

What could the murder suspect have been thinking when local firefighters unrolled a massive inflatable airbag below the windowsill, and when the crane of a fire truck began slowly rising into the air alongside him? Did he even notice the net closing around him, intent as he was on escaping the police who had him cornered? Or did he simply have other things on his mind?

Whatever the case, the fire brigade didn't allow him time to reflect. Fire fighters unleashed a powerful fire hose blast on him from the crane, slowly forcing the murder suspect over the edge of the window sill. Video footage shows the man clinging to the ledge for a good four or five seconds--admittedly impressive, considering the power of the fire hoses--before plummeting over the side and falling eight stories down into the waiting arms of the airbag.

Local Chinese police quickly determined that the man was unharmed and took him into custody. After that, his fate remains unknown. But we do know the fate of the man's wife and other potential victims in the hospital and otherwise close to him. They remain alive today--thanks to the fire brigade, and their unorthodox methods.