Baltimore County Police Officer David Allen volunteered to respond to the call about a man with a gun who was threatening to kill himself.
Allen said he immediately starting driving to a home on Powers Avenue above Sherwood Road in Cockeysville Feb. 8, 2023. Two people were standing on the driveway, he said, and one of them darted back inside the house.
Allen arrived right after Officer April Burton. They spoke with the man’s father, John, or Whit, who relayed that his son had a gun in the car and possibly a rifle in the basement. By that time, Officer Barry Jordan had joined them.
Next, Allen walked over to a 2007 Ford Mustang, found two guns inside a backpack in the vehicle and made sure the doors were locked. He then caught up with the other officers, who had followed the man’s father into the basement.
When Allen reached the bottom of the stairs, he testified, there was a “barrage of gunfire.” He said he was “terrified,” and, after a second volley of shots, “even more terrified.”
“It just felt like the stairs were vibrating around me. It was loud,” Allen testified on Wednesday. “We proceeded to get the heck out of there.”
Outside the home, Jordan thought he had just been hit with shrapnel but later realized that he was more seriously wounded. Allen ordered him to get into the back of a patrol vehicle and took off, hightailing it to an ambulance that had parked down the street at a staging area.
Allen was one of two officers who responded to that call to testify against the gunman, David Linthicum, as he stands trial in Baltimore County Circuit Court on five counts of attempted first-degree murder and related offenses. The jury also watched video from their body cameras of the shooting.
Linthicum, who turned 26 on Wednesday, is also on trial in the shooting of Detective Jonathan Chih, which happened on Feb. 9, 2023.
The Harford County Sheriff’s Office on Feb. 10, 2023, arrested Linthicum after a standoff.
Deborah Katz Levi and James Dills, Linthicum’s attorneys, argue that their client was experiencing a mental health crisis and contend that police mishandled the response.
Levi is director of special litigation for the Maryland Office of the Public Defender in Baltimore. Dills is district public defender for Baltimore County.
On cross-examination, Allen testified that he had never experienced something like the shooting while responding to a call.
Police, he said, would not approach if they knew a person was armed with a long gun. But Allen said officers respond all the time to homes where there are guns.
“You never saw Mr. Linthicum?” Levi asked.
“No,” Allen replied.
Later, Burton testified that police went to the home to help. She said she wanted to talk to Linthicum and build rapport with him.
At first, Burton knocked on the door to the basement.
“David. It’s Officer Arnett,” said Burton, who at the time had a different last name, on body camera video. “Can I talk to you?”
He did not respond.
Police then followed his father down the stairs into the basement. Burton said she also could not see into the bedroom.
“Then,” she testified, “he opened fire.”
As she ran up the stairs, Burton said she was hit with debris. Burton said she thought, “I’m going to get hit.”
In body camera video played on cross-examination, Burton remarked, “It’s like we agitated the situation.”
But Burton later testified that she meant that she had always been able to de-escalate situations. Police, she said, are there to protect life and property.
She said she would not have done anything different.
“We were there to help,” Burton testified. “And he didn’t want it.”
