For bystander shot by Baltimore Police, the trauma hasn’t faded

On a Saturday afternoon almost three years ago, two Baltimore Police officers were summoned to the Compare Foods Supermarket on The Alameda in North Baltimore by a call about an armed man.

Within seconds of police arriving, the man, later identified as Dontae Green, a security guard at the market, started a gunfight with police.

One officer immediately retreated out of the store and called for backup. Another returned fire, aiming his shots over one of the checkout counters, where a bespectacled store employee took cover, crouching in a fetal position just below the line of fire, covering his head with his hands while attempting to use his cellphone.

The officer who remained in the store retreated through an open door, up a flight of stairs and into an office where two other employees had sought safety. From a perch at the top of the stairs, the officer continued to fire his Glock 22 handgun.

Within minutes, Green fled the store and the shooting stopped. The initial police report indicated one person, identified only as a 20-year-old man, had been injured. He was shot in the arm, treated at a hospital and released, a seemingly minor injury when viewed from afar in a police report.

Five days later, Green, apparently angered over money he believed the store owed him, was found at a home on North Mount Street in Sandtown-Winchester and killed in an exchange of gunfire with U.S. Marshals, who had come to serve an arrest warrant.

Although the story more or less ended there, Luis Rodriguez’s story had just begun. Rodriguez, the employee who hid behind the cashier’s counter, was the only physical casualty that day, although it would take weeks and months and years for his ordeal to be sorted and publicly acknowledged.

Rodriguez filed a lawsuit Thursday morning in Baltimore City Circuit Court against Wesley Rosenberger, the officer who shot him, for what his attorney Malcolm Ruff described as a “traumatic and unnecessary” injury.

“He blindly fired his weapon,” Ruff said Thursday at a press conference, held in his offices. “Without knowing whether he was friend or foe, he shot him.”

Rosenberger’s decision, Ruff said, “has ruined [Rodriguez’s] life. He’s always looking over his shoulder.”

The suit claims gross negligence and battery, and it requests a jury trial. The Baltimore Police Department is liable for any judgment against Rosenberger, provided he was acting within the scope of his employment with the BPD, Ruff said. Monetary damages are limited to $400,000 by the Maryland Tort Claims Act.

“People don’t think about the collateral effects of poor police action,” Ruff said. “Luis is thankful that he survived, that he’s alive. It could have turned out differently.”

Ruff said his client has limited range of motion in his injured arm, damage to tendons, chronic pain and scarring. He underwent physical therapy and corrective surgery. Rodriguez also suffers from flashbacks, sleeplessness, suicidal thoughts and bouts of anger, and he has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Rodriguez moved to Philadelphia a few weeks after the shooting on Jan. 30, 2021, and had not stepped foot in Baltimore since, until he attended Thursday’s press conference, appearing shaken and subdued. He said he stopped three times during his drive to Baltimore and almost turned around. He developed anxiety and depression; almost everything triggers the trauma of that day, he said. Only in the last few months has he been willing to leave his house.

The shooting is still vivid, like “it happened yesterday,” Rodriguez said by phone last week.

According to the findings of a use-of-force investigation by Baltimore Police released Feb. 9 this year, 31 shots were fired, 16 by Rosenberger. The officer who left, Daniel Jensen, did not fire his weapon. The State’s Attorney was notified, according to the report. The office declined to pursue criminal charges. The investigation exonerated Rosenberger.

“It’s clear Officer Rosenberger was acting to preserve his life and the life of the innocent civilians in the store at that time,” the report stated. “All the while engaging in a gunfight with an active shooter.”

Both officers are still employed by the department. BPD declined to provide comment on the case.

Surveillance cameras and the officers’ body-worn cameras captured the harrowing few minutes during which all the shots were fired, the type of scene that is often described as from a movie. What the footage shows, however, is how un-movie-like real crime can be. It shows panic, chaos and unadulterated terror. It shows instinctive acts of survival, rather than decisive acts of bravery and heroism.

Before Rosenberger took shelter in the office, he attempted to leave through an emergency exit door but found it locked, footage showed. He noticed the door to the office ajar, opened it and ran up the stairs, without closing the door behind him. About 20 seconds later, Rodriguez came through the same door and Rosenberger opened fire.

One of the other co-workers can be heard shouting “no, no, no, no, no … he works here, he works here,” as Rodriguez reaches the top of the stairs.

Rosenberger shot twice at Rodriguez at the bottom of the stairs. With sunlight behind the door, Rodriguez appeared to Rosenberger as a silhouette “with something black in their hand,” according to the investigative summary. Ruff said the cellphone’s screen can be seen glowing, which the store footage confirmed.

“No gun that I know of comes with an LED screen,” Ruff said.

Rosenberger’s first shot missed; the second hit the back of Rodriguez’s upper right arm and went through, leaving him with an entry wound and an exit wound.

“At first I didn’t even know I got shot,” Rodriguez said. “The first thing I did before I even went up the stairs was lock the door so no one could go up there. Then my hand went numb. I remember wondering why I couldn’t use my arm. Then I saw blood on my hand and the pain started kicking in. I noticed that my red hoodie was turning darker red.”

Body-camera footage shows Rodriguez arriving at the top of the stairs with his right arm hanging limply. Surveillance footage shows one of the other two co-workers already in the office pulling off Rodriguez’s hoodie and wrapping his arm to stop the bleeding. He gave him water to drink and embraced Rodriguez to comfort him. Rosenberger also helped give first aid to Rodriguez, providing a tourniquet.

“I remember he lays me down and he’s telling me to breathe slow,” Rodriguez said. “I’m thinking that I’m going to lose my arm. My hand was numb.”

All the medical care he received that day, he said, was given to him by the first responders. Once at the hospital, he spent most of his time waiting alone in an exam room. He didn’t have his phone. He was not allowed to have visitors in the room with him because of COVID concerns, he said. He was given a COVID test. A nurse drew blood.

“I just started crying,” Rodriguez said. “My arm, it was really painful. I looked at it, and it made it worse. I saw all the blood and bandages, and I just started crying.”

Rodriguez was supposed to take that day off to spend time with his girlfriend, but those plans were canceled so he decided to work. He had been on the job and in Baltimore less than a year. He grew up in Philadelphia, the oldest of three kids. His parents owned a bodega there, and he planned to go into the family business.

His father was one of the franchise owners of the store in Baltimore, a step up from the bodega, and Rodriguez was being groomed to manage it. As the son of an owner, more was expected of him. He did a little bit of everything in the store, he said, but mostly worked the cash registers and did the bookkeeping.

“That job opened up an opportunity for me to run a big supermarket,” he said. “I was having fun, living my best life, enjoying my time there, enjoying the people, learning the town.”

After the shooting, Rodriguez became emotionally distant to those around him. He refused to go back to Baltimore, so eventually his relationship ended. For the first two years, he did “three things: sit at home, eat and sleep. I wasn’t going out at all. I gained weight. I’m trying to lose that weight now. I was just trapped in my own little bubble. Everything for me was a trigger.”

His father divested his share of the franchise. Rodriguez recently started working again, delivering packages for Amazon, but he is thinking about quitting.

“I didn’t feel safe going outside, didn’t feel comfortable doing anything,” he said. “I thought working would help, but it’s making me worse. I thought I was getting better … but when I’m outside, I don’t feel safe.”

“I’m mentally not ready to move on,” he said. “Mentally, I’m still there at that point in time.”