By Rick Armon
Beacon Journal staff writer
A nearly 12-hour standoff with a robbery suspect ended peacefully Wednesday afternoon when the armed man’s mother finally talked him into surrendering to police.
Brandon Lee Torrence, 21, was holed up in a house on Sixth Street Southwest with a handgun and a 14-year-old runaway girl for the majority of the showdown. Police originally suspected the teen was a hostage, but later learned she wasn’t.
The girl, who was visibly shaken, left the house out a back window about an hour before the standoff ended. She was taken into custody unharmed.
Torrence, wearing a red T-shirt, handed an automatic handgun out a back window to police just before 2 p.m. and then walked out the front door as SWAT team members pointed rifles at him. He and his mother, Beverly Howard of North Canton, embraced before he was led away. He was expected to be evaluated at an area hospital and then taken to the Stark County Jail.
``It could have gone ugly, but it didn’t,’' police Capt. James W. Myers said afterward. He added that ``various charges’’ would be filed, but he could not be more specific.
Howard said her son didn’t come out of the house earlier because he was scared. ``He thought because he was a black man with a gun, that the police would shoot,’' she said afterward.
She spoke with her son by cell phone and pleaded with him to end the standoff. ``I asked him if he’d do it for me,’' she said. She also told him ``I love him, and I’d be by his side, and I wouldn’t leave him.’'
Torrence and his brother were suspects in an earlier robbery of people outside a Wal-Mart store, Myers said. Police tracked him to the Sixth Street residence, where they believe he lived, and the standoff began.
Torrence’s father, Nacolean Torrence of Canton, was one of several relatives who waited outside a police blockade at Sixth Street and Ingram Avenue. He described his son as a good kid who made poor decisions.
Torrence was found guilty this year in Canton Municipal Court of theft and three counts of assault.
Torrence, who has a 1-year-old child, never graduated from high school and was working temporary jobs to make ends meet, his father said. The elder Torrence said he encouraged his son to leave Canton.
``Our best bet is to get out of Canton because there ain’t no jobs here,’' he said, tears in his eyes.
The standoff caused a stir in the blue-collar neighborhood in the shadow of Aultman Hospital. Neighbors and onlookers gathered throughout the frigid day to watch SWAT team members carry on negotiations. Police evacuated many homes in the area and ordered students from nearby Cedar Elementary School not to come near the scene.
The Summit County SWAT team was on standby because of the length of the negotiations.
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