CEDAR HILL LAKES, Mo. _ A five-hour standoff ended Wednesday when a gunman who had been standing over a dead woman on a porch of a Jefferson County home surrendered to sheriff's deputies.
Sheriff Dave Marshak said negotiators arrested the man after he agreed to surrender peacefully. During the ordeal, the gunman wouldn't let officers anywhere close to the body.
Marshak confirmed that the body was that of a woman. She has not been positively identified, but police believe the suspect, 62, and the victim were a married couple who lived at the home, in this small village south of Cedar Hill.
Police are expecting charges against the gunman.
The victim's body had been on the porch at the feet of the gunman for the duration of the standoff, from about 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. Wednesday in the 8400 block of Eastview Drive, east of Highway 30.
A neighbor, Justin Colbert, said he is close friends with the son of the couple who lived at the home.
"As close as I was to that family, I can't imagine what happened," said Colbert, 29. "We're a close-knit neighborhood here. It's nothing we would expect to hear. This is devastating."
It all began when a neighbor called police after hearing gunfire on Eastview Drive about 6 a.m. She said she had gone outside after hearing the shots and a man had pointed a gun at her, Higginbotham said. The neighbor ran back into her home.
Police rushed to the neighborhood and found a man on a deck and "discovered a person unresponsive on the deck," Marshak said. A man pointed a gun at officers, so they ducked for cover.
Deputies tried to talk with the suspect and asked for negotiators to come help. Higginbotham said police, keeping some distance, used a high-powered scope to look at the body.
The suspect had stayed outside the house during the entire standoff.
Higginbotham said deputies searched their call logs, going back five years, and found that they haven't responded to any incidents at the house during that time.
Colbert, the neighbor who was friends with the couple's son, said he was shocked.
"She was the sweetest woman you would ever want to meet," he said. "She was a saint. She deserved a lot better than that."
At one point during the standoff, police reached the couple's son, but he was uncooperative, saying he hadn't talked to his parents in years. He later showed up at the scene and tried to enter the area police had restricted. Officers were able to walk him back to his car.
Suddenly, he drove his car toward the restricted area, narrowly missing a cameraman and some equipment that reporters had set up near the scene, Higginbotham said.
The man then ran away from his car and detectives chased him, eventually arresting him in a wooded area, Higginbotham said. It's possible he may face charges.
