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CRESCENT, Okla. – A suspected gang member was arrested after allegedly strangling and threatening to kill his wife, then fleeing from a SWAT team.

Devonte Smotherman is charged with robbery by force or fear, and domestic assault by strangulation.

It started with an argument between Smotherman and his wife.

According to the affidavit, Smotherman told her “I will kill you and your dogs and bury you in the backyard and sleep like a baby.”

“It’s reported that he put his hand over her mouth and nose to where she couldn’t breathe,” said Crescent Police Chief Chase Biggs.

She said he was holding her hostage, along with her things.

“He had forced her to take off all her jewelry and took all of her money from her,” Biggs said.

The woman escaped to a Love’s gas station nearby, but Smotherman followed, allegedly threatening to drag her out of there.

When police arrived, she told him he was back home and unwilling to return to jail.

“He had told her if she called police that he would make the police shoot him if we came to the house,” Biggs said.

So, the SWAT team and a negotiator were both called in. However, by the time SWAT arrived, Smotherman had escaped out of the back.

The US Marshals fugitive task force arrested Smotherman two days later at a hotel in Oklahoma City.

“Whenever guns start getting involved and threats of murder and things of that nature get involved, it just brings it to a whole other level,” Biggs said.