WESTLAND (WWJ) -- A man has been arrested after the shooting death of a woman prompted an intense police response and eight-hour standoff in Westland.
WWJ's Charlie Langton said, early Wednesday morning, officers had surrounded a trailer home at the Old Orchard Mobile Home Park in the area of Glenwood and Wayne Rd., near the Westland-Wayne border.
Livonia police were on the scene along with Westland police and a SWAT team and snipers on nearby buildings. "It's getting more intense...a lot of police now here," Langton reported. "They're trying to get a barricaded gunman out of a trailer."
Witnesses told Langton that, sometime after midnight, 41-year-old Tabitha Lee Cronwell was at the home with her boyfriend. There was some sort of domestic dispute, Cronwell tried to leave and the boyfriend allegedly fired shots into her Jeep Cherokee, killing her.
The boyfriend then barricaded himself in the trailer, which was quickly surrounded by police.
Family members on the scene were in shock.
"I don't know (what happened), except for my daughter was shot and killed, my baby girl, last night," the victim's mother," Diane Smith said. "Police said it was a domestic violence dispute. It was a man, drug dealer, felon, with a gun... shouldn't have had a gun."
Cronwell's sister, Rachael Nickens, said Cronwell and her boyfriend were at a birthday party when they got into an argument. "...She was leaving to avoid the argument, and he chased her down like a dog and shot at her and killed her," Nickens told Langton.
Police remained on the active scene as of 7:30 a.m. Shortly before 8 a.m., the suspect surrendered to the Western Wayne SWAT Team and was taken into custody without incident.
The investigation is ongoing.
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