Baltimore Police shot and killed a man near Patterson Park Thursday evening after the man fired on officers after attempting to flee from them.
The shooting happened in the 100 block of North Milton Avenue around 5:30 p.m.
Officers saw a 40-year-old man they knew was wanted on a warrant, according to acting Commissioner Richard Worley. Officers followed the man’s vehicle but he attempted to flee. Eventually the man’s “vehicle became disabled” at the intersection of Fairmount and Milton, Worley said.
As officers were driving past, Worley said, the man began firing at them. Additional police arrived at the scene from the opposite direction and fired multiple rounds at the man, who was hit and pronounced dead at the scene, Worley said. “Multiple officers” discharged their guns, the Maryland Attorney General’s Office added in a Friday press release.
No officers were injured, Worley said. Police did not say what the man’s warrant was for.
“As you can see behind me, it is a quite extensive crime scene. Our men and women are going to be here for a very long period of time,” Worley said.
Worley said both weapons were automatic, and that the man had dropped the first weapon and was getting ready to fire the second when he was killed. A handgun with an extended magazine and a short-barreled rifle were found near the man at the scene, according to the AG’s Office’s Friday press release.
A team of investigators from the AG’s Office were on the scene Thursday night, according to Thomas Lester, spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Independent Investigations Division. The office will release the body-worn camera footage, he said, and are also working to identify the officers that were involved.
At the scene, police tape marked off two blocks of East Fayette Street and about two blocks of East Fairmont Avenue, as well as the entire 100 block of North Milton Avenue. A black car with one door open and its windshield wipers still on, which police confirmed belonged to the man killed, was stopped near the middle of the intersection of Milton and Fairmont. A police officer peered into the car Thursday evening.
Anjuli Singh, 33, and Jeannine Miller, 50 were sitting outside their houses around 6:50 p.m. Thursday, one street up from Milton Avenue. Both heard what sounded like a screech around 5:30 p.m., they said, that sounded like a car had taken a sharp turn or had gotten into an accident. Then they heard a couple of gunshots. After a brief pause, they said, they heard many more gunshots.
Whitney Karimah, 37, heard what she thought was fireworks, or a trash truck, she said. She lives one block up from where police tape blocked off Fayette. But once she went outside and saw police, she knew it was probably a rapid burst of multiple gunshots, she said.
