Follow-Up: SWAT Standoff Ends With Surrender

A police SWAT team Monday surrounded a house in the Woodland Hills area where an armed man suspected of domestic violence held off police nearly 10 hours before surrendering.

Officers were sent to the 6700 block of Winnetka Avenue, just east of Los Angeles Pierce College and about half a block south of Vanowen Street, shortly before 5 a.m., when a woman reported that someone was trying to break into her residence, said Officer Bruce Borihanh of the Los Angeles Police Department's Media Relations office.

The woman was interviewed by investigators, who determined that the incident apparently started in a domestic dispute, Borihanh said. A SWAT member engaged in "a very lengthy negotiation'' to get the suspect to give himself up, officers said.

Neighbors on either side of the house were evacuated when sharpshooters arrived. The man, who was not immediately identified, surrendered at about 3 p.m. and was to be booked for suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon on an officer and spousal battery, according to Officer Karen Rayner. The suspect did not actually fire the weapon, but pointed it at an officer. Rayner said the exact relationship between the suspect and the woman who summoned police had not been sorted out.