John “Whit” Linthicum was looking for help.
On Feb. 8, 2023, Linthicum testified on Tuesday, his son, David, reported that he wanted to kill himself. He demanded to take his father’s motorcycle and threatened to steal one. The two men got into an argument.
Next, Linthicum called 911.
“I have a son who’s being suicidal,” he told a dispatcher. “He has a gun.”
What transpired next was a three-day manhunt, during which two Baltimore County Police officers were shot, schools and businesses closed, and people sheltered in place inside their homes.
More than 1 1/2 years later, David Linthicum, 25, of Cockeysville, is standing trial in Baltimore County Circuit Court on five counts of attempted first-degree murder and related offenses.
Prosecutors argue that he tried to kill the very people who were there to help him. But his defense attorneys contend that he was experiencing a mental health crisis — and police botched the response.
In his opening statement, Deputy State’s Attorney John Cox said three officers responded on Feb. 8, 2023, to the home on Powers Avenue above Sherwood Road in Cockeysville to help.
Cox played body camera video of what unfolded. “I guarantee you,” he told the jury, “Sadly, you’re never going to forget this.”
With police asking questions and following him, John “Whit” Linthicum unlocked the basement door with a small screwdriver and descended down the stairs. He walked to the entrance of his son’s room and started talking to him. “David. You’re going to shoot me?”
That’s when David Linthicum fired an initial volley of 12 shots with an AR-15 through the wall at the three officers. He then squeezed off four more rounds as they ran up the stairs, Cox said.
When he got outside the house, Officer Barry Jordan said he felt something and remarked, “I think it’s just shrapnel on my love handles.” But he later realized that he “took shots to both flanks,” Cox said.
Meanwhile, David Linthicum, he said, took off.
On Feb. 9, 2023, Detective Jonathan Chih went to check on a man walking along Warren Road his colleagues believed was a hitchhiker.
Cox played body camera video from that encounter and told jurors, “This is even worse than what I just showed you.”
Chih pulled over and got out of his 2013 Ram 1500.
“What’s up?” Chih asked.
“Are you here to kill me?” David Linthicum responded.
“No,” Chih replied. “Why?”
Next, David Linthicum fired 14 shots at Chih, hitting him multiple times, and stole his pickup, Cox said. Chih, he said, returned fire. He writhed in agony and shouted expletives. “I’m shot, I’m shot, I’m shot!”
The Harford County Sheriff’s Office on Feb. 10, 2023, arrested David Linthicum after an eight-hour standoff.
“They were there to help,” Cox said. “David Linthicum tried to take those lives.”
But Deborah Katz Levi, one of David Linthicum’s attorneys, spoke from her own personal experience and implored the jury to view what happened with a wider lens.
Levi is director of special litigation for the Maryland Office of the Public Defender in Baltimore.
She described her client as a “deeply sad, anxious and gentle person who desperately needed help.”
His mother, Sonja, was from Germany and deaf. He had a language delay and learning disability and attended the St. Paul’s Schools, Odyssey School and Jemicy School. And his parents went through a “tumultuous, tumultuous, contentious divorce,” Levi said.
In 2022, Levi said, her client’s father took him to Sheppard Pratt, a mental health service provider, with suicidal ideations. But he left.
“He wanted to die again,” Levi said in her opening statement. “He wanted his life to end.”
Police, she said, had all kinds of resources available to them, including trained therapists and crisis negotiators as well as time, space and training. But they decided to go into the house, anyway.
“David is a sad person who was having a crisis,” Levi said. “He’s shooting to flee in a deranged mental health crisis.”
Law enforcement, she said, was disorganized and took hours to set up a perimeter. Even though police deployed snipers, armored vehicles and helicopters, Levi said, her client was able to twice slip back home.
Detectives, she said, did not use caution. Levi said her client believed that police were going to kill him.
Later, Amanda Darby, David Linthicum’s ex-girlfriend, testified that he “hated police.”
On cross-examination, Darby admitted that she once texted David Linthicum that if the police killed him, she would shoot them. She agreed that people do not always mean everything they say.
Next, Jordan, the police officer, testified that he was checking in on the Wegmans in Hunt Valley and buying flowers for his wife when he heard the call over the radio.
He said he felt a “little stinging” and did not initially believe that he had been shot. “In fact,” Jordan said, “I was shot with bullet fragments.”
Doctors, he said, told him that it would be more harmful to operate and remove them.
Jordan said he wanted to make sure that the home was safe before calling for the mobile crisis or tactical teams. He said he was there to help.
Assistant State’s Attorney Zarena Sita asked about what happened to the flowers that he had bought for his wife.
“Were you able to deliver them to her?” she asked.
“The next day,” Jordan answered.
