The man accused in the fatal shooting of a woman in Arden on Friday confessed to the killing after he had barricaded himself for hours in a room at a downtown West Palm Beach hotel, the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office said Monday.
Four people contacted the Sheriff's Office on Friday to say Todd Wegrich had either called or texted friends and family members to say he had killed his girlfriend, according to a prepared statement from the agency.
Wegrich locked himself in a guest room at The Ben Hotel after the incident and threatened to harm himself before surrendering to law-enforcement officers, according to the statement.
Investigators have not released the name of the woman, whose body deputies found with apparent gunshot wounds in a house
on Tangled Orchard Trace, off Southern Boulevard about 10 miles west of State Road 7.
Wegrich, 53, remains in custody at the county jail, where he is being held without bail. The county Public Defender's Office is representing him. As a policy, it does not comment on open cases.
Man checked in as Ben Hotel guest before barricading himself in room
Wegrich fled from the Arden home after the incident and drove about 20 miles east to downtown West Palm Beach, where investigators found his vehicle in a parking garage next to the hotel, on the 200 block of Narcissus Avenue.
He registered as a guest at the hotel and locked himself in his room.
The Sheriff's Office traced Wegrich to the hotel and said deputies spoke with him by phone for hours, working to negotiate a peaceful surrender into their custody.
Wegrich refused their offers and said he was willing to harm himself. At some points, he was "even suggesting that he would force law enforcement to use force against him," according to the prepared statement.
The SWAT teams of the Sheriff's Office and West Palm Beach police succeeded in taking Wegrich into custody without incident, the statement said.
It was not immediately clear whether Wegrich lived in the house with the woman.
Tom Elia is an editor at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at telia@pbpost.com. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: PBSO: Arden man in Ben Hotel standoff confessed to killing girlfriend
