Latest updated on Ellis Crosby and Associates

Friday, there was in incident involving your favorite collection agency.

This is an article published in fox30online about the incident:

Two men are in jail after what police are calling a robbery turned shootout. It led to a massive 5-hour manhunt that put one Southside neighborhood on lockdown.

It began Friday afternoon near Deerwood Lake Parkway and Southside. JSO investigators say The robbery happened in the parking lot of a business park where Ellis Crosby and Associates, a collection agency is located.

Reporter Jeff Butera did some digging and found a lengthy police report on the incident. The report says a former employee of the collection agency came in to get a paycheck she claimed she was owed.

Investigators say when the company refused, an argument began and spilled into the parking lot. police say two men who may be connected to the former employee began firing shots at the agency president Ted Crosby. "I remember the gun being pointed at me first, you know, and I thought that was it;" Crosby told us.

He however, had a gun of his own and fired back at the suspects. One of the men ran off into a nearby condo complex. That's when the SWAT team was called in and residents in the neighborhood were told to stay inside. Five hours later the suspect was caught and residents were allowed out of their homes.

The story does not stop there. We dug a little deeper after two former employees called our newsroom to complain about the owner of the collection agency.

We learned that Ted Crosby has a history of his own. The Florida State Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against his company Ellis Crosby and Associates after receiving 120 consumer complaints. The lawsuit alleges Crosby and employees threatened consumers and imposed illegal fees.

We asked Crosby about the lawsuit and what role it may have played in his current run-in with a former employee. He told our Jeff Butera; "I mean the lawsuit was a cause of a lot of things. I'm not going to sit behind your microphone and say the AG is the cause of all my problems."

Crosby does acknowledge he did fail to pay his employees their paychecks one week. He says he made a mistake and isn't perfect.

Ellis Crosby and Associates has also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. We'll continue to try to find out what connection Friday's incident has to the lawsuit and Crosby's trouble with his employees.

Two posts combined to one for better readability - Vikas