Feb. 28--A man surrendered to police after barricading himself inside a Lakeview neighborhood apartment Saturday morning for more than four hours.
Chicago Police Department SWAT teams were called about 3:15 a.m. to the 1400 block of West Cornelia Avenue where the 28-year-old man had barricaded himself inside an apartment after a domestic argument, said Officer Ron Gaines, a police spokesman.
The man, who was possibly armed, was alone inside the apartment. Police had taped off a large perimeter between Southport and Greenview avenues and from Addison to Roscoe streets.
By 7:25 a.m., the man had peacefully surrendered to police and was taken into custody, police spokesman Jose Estrada said.
A neighbor, who declined to give her name, said Saturday afternoon that she and her husband woke up around 6:50 a.m. to the sound of police talking to the man over a loudspeaker, urging the man to pick up the phone and assuring him he wasn't in trouble.
"They kept repeating, '...we want to know you're okay,'" she said.
She said she didn't realize the man they were talking to was her neighbor until she heard the buzzer in the neighboring apartment sound as the man let police into the apartment building.
She said she listened at the door as police spoke to the man and said they spoke very calmly in the hallway.
"Police asked him where the gun was -- that was the scariest part," she said. "He said it so calmly, 'The M4 is on the bed, it's loaded.'"
The neigbor said she did not hear any fighting before police arrived or anyone other than police and the neighbor and said she had rarely spoken to the man previously. She said he seemed "completely normal," they only talked in passing.
