Baltimore Police were “authorized to use deadly force to defend themselves and other individuals” when they killed a wanted man during a shootout in 2023 near Patterson Park, the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office ruled on Friday.
Prosecutors with the Public Trust and Police Integrity Unit wrote in a report that body camera video, dispatch audio, surveillance footage and witness statements confirmed that Darryl Gamble, 40, of Baltimore, was the “initial aggressor.” Police were “reacting to deadly force being used on them and in the vicinity of civilians in the area.”
Deadly force, prosecutors reported, was “necessary considering the threat of harm.”
On April 11, 2023, Gamble was accidentally released from the Baltimore Central Booking & Intake Center, according to the report.
Gamble was “a known suspect in relation to a non-fatal shooting,” the report states, and police had found 25 gel caps of heroin in a baggie on him after conducting a traffic stop.
Police later obtained a search and seizure warrant for his 2014 Ford Taurus and discovered 69 gel caps of heroin, 78 grams of suspected cocaine, an AK-47-style rifle and two handguns, according to the report.
Law enforcement applied for additional charges, the report states, but Gamble was not held on the new offenses and released on bond due to a “typographical error” with his name in the arrest warrant.
Officers in an unmarked vehicle stopped at a Royal Farms in the Patterson Park neighborhood for lunch and spotted Gamble on June 29, 2023. He took off, abandoned his car at the intersection of North Milton Avenue and East Fairmount Avenue and started shooting at law enforcement, the report states, using a handgun with a drum magazine and what police previously described as an automatic rifle.
Police later converged on Gamble and shot him several times.
The Maryland Office of the Attorney General’s Independent Investigations Division reported that it turned over its findings to the state’s attorney on Dec. 20, 2023.
