Suspected gang members in Southwest Baltimore engaged police in a brazen mid-day shoot-out during a traffic stop Tuesday ? with one suspect shooting an officer in the leg.
The altercation began when two officers pulled over a vehicle containing “known gang members” around 2 p.m. at West Lanvale and Poplar Grove streets ? and a suspect inside the car jumped out and began to run, Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld said.
The suspect turned and fired a handgun at Officer Mark Spila, 25, striking him ? causing Spila and two other officers to return fire, striking the suspect multiple times, he said.
Mayor Sheila Dixon called Spila, a three-year veteran of the force, “heroic.”
“Our officers are out every day trying to make our community safe,” Mayor Sheila Dixon said. “This case just emphasizes the importance of illegal guns that we have to get off of our streets. I guarantee the guns that were involved were illegal guns.”
Spila, who is assigned to the Southwest District gang unit, and the suspect were in critical condition at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. Spila?s injury was described as “non-life-threatening.”
Officers responding to the scene were shot at by a second suspect, who they believed barricaded himself in a nearby house, Bealefeld said.
Police have recovered one suspect?s weapon from the scene, Bealefeld said, adding he believed three suspects were involved.
Alexander Hamilton Elementary School was locked down during the incident.
Dr. Andrew Pollack, the chief of orthopedics at Shock Trauma, said Spila had a “severe fracture” to
his femur.
Pollack said the officer was in good spirits as he awaited a surgery.
As three police helicopters circled the scene around 3 p.m., a crowd gathered outside the taped-off crime scene.
Neighbor Steven Johnson, 36, said his 11- and 8-year-old daughters were in the locked-down school.
“I?m very concerned,” he said. “I?m not going to be happy until I can see them, hold them and make sure they?re OK.”
Brian Waters, 51, said that he?s lived in the neighborhood for 30 years and drug gangs with guns make everyone there uneasy.
“It?s sporadic,” he said of the violence. “But it?s gotten worse.”
Neighbor Diane Rose, 56, said violence is all too common in the area, with a shooting two blocks away earlier this month.
“They don?t have respect for authority anymore,” Rose said of young men in the neighborhood.
“If you?ll shoot a police officer, you?ll shoot anybody.”
Examiner Staff Writer Jaime Malarkey contributed to this article.
