Family wakes up to gunman on roof, police outside house

Grand Rapids, MI — A Grand Rapids family is thankful for their safety after police discovered a man with a gun on their roof.

“I feel unsafe now,” Sulma Cruz told WXMI.

Cruz was awakend early Sunday morning by a phone call from police.

“‘How many people in the house?’ I said, ‘There’s four of us.’ She goes, ‘Can you walk to the door? Everybody, police are there waiting for you,’” said Cruz.

Police were first called to the scene of a fight near the 400 block of Grandville Avenue SW. When they arrived, one of the suspects armed with a gun fled to a neighborhood a mile away.

Cruz was concerned. “Is there going to be a shoot out? Ya know, is he going to start shooting? What’s going to happen?”

The suspect left the Grandville scene in a vehicle but crashed about a mile away near the intersection of Godfrey and Oxford. From there, he ran to the Cruz home on Norwich Avenue, where he climbed on their roof.

“You hear, like, the dragging, like somebody is trying to hide. That’s what you hear, and like somebody is trying to bang on something,” said Cruz.

The suspect was up there for nearly two hours until police arrested him. Cruz says she has always felt comfortable in her neighborhood, but now she questions her safety.

“I’ve been here for five years, and this has never happened,” Cruz said. “It’s never happened around here. It’s a good block.”

Police say the man eventually surrendered without incident. They have not yet released his name.