BUFFALO - An armed driver involved police in a standoff on Interstate 190 in Buffalo for nearly three hours Monday before being taken into custody.

Police dragged the man from his pickup truck and handcuffed him about 8:50 p.m. He was walked, apparently unhurt, to a waiting ambulance, placed on a gurney and loaded inside.

A state trooper pulled the truck over around 6 p.m. in the southbound lane of the busy thoroughfare, which runs off of the state Thruway through downtown Buffalo and along the Niagara River to Niagara Falls.

After a woman was removed from the vehicle, the driver, who wore shorts and sneakers, spent the next 2.5 hours getting in and out of his truck, speaking on a cell phone, gesturing with a handgun and occasionally shouting to state troopers and Buffalo police who surrounded him.

Buffalo police spokesman Michael DeGeorge said a domestic dispute appears to have started the incident.

A caller to WIVB television, Tom Snyder, said he called authorities after seeing a man beating a woman inside the truck parked off the interstate in Grand Island, minutes before the standoff began.

The suspect's identity was not immediately released. Traffic was stopped in both directions, while numerous officers crouched with guns drawn behind a barrier separating the highway's northbound and southbound lanes. Hostage negotiators and a crowd of onlookers stood by.