A Baltimore County police officer was shot and wounded Thursday by an attempted robbery suspect who had fled a grocery store parking lot and was holed up in a backyard shed nearby in Perry Hall, authorities said.
For the second time this week in the county, the suspect in the police-involved shooting was dead at the scene, police said. A tactical officer returned fire on the shed.
As neighbors watched the fog-enshrouded scene from their windows, colleagues carried Officer David Garner out of the yard to an ambulance and crowds of police tried to determine if the suspect was still alive.
“They drove through the fence like it wasn?t even there,” said Vicki Rummel, whose backyard overlooks the shed where the shooting took place. A heavy police truck plowed through her neighbors? yards and police officers took over her home as she sat with her 13-year-old son, Alex, on a staircase.
Garner, 39, an officer assigned to the canine unit with 16 years in the department, was shot in the arm and the abdomen and was doing well following surgery at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, Cpl. Michael Hill said. Garner has a wife and two children.
Police didn?t identify the dead man or another suspect caught running out of the Super Fresh grocery store, on the 8900 block of Belair Road, and taken into custody.
In the residential neighborhood near the store, Garner reportedly followed his German shepherd, Niko, through a yard and over a fence as the dog picked up the suspect?s scent. Niko wasn?t injured in the shooting, Hill said.
The incident began at about 7 a.m. when two men walked into the store and initiated a robbery, Hill said. Coincidentally, a group of officers tracking a trend of such robberies had set up surveillance outside.
There have been six robberies this year of Mars and Super Fresh stores in which two or three masked suspects stole money during the early morning hours, Hill said.
An employee alerted police and the officers chased the suspects through the parking lot, Hill said. It appeared that no money was taken.
It was not immediately clear how many shots were fired around the shed, and police could not say what killed the suspect. After setting off tear gas inside, officers extended a specialty camera brought by Howard County police toward the shed after about 11 a.m. and saw the suspect dead, Hill said.
“My mom was just saying, ?get down,? ” said Alex Himmel, who watched the scene unfold from his kitchen until officers directed them to the stairs. “We kept peeking up to see out the window.”
Four area schools went into lockdown after the shooting, authorities said. Neighbors were told to stay indoors and gave updates on the scene over the phone; at one point William Klass said he saw investigators crowded in the neighbor?s yard out his window.
“They were in front of the shed with the door open,” Klass said, adding that at 77, he is “too old for this.”
Lynda Cramer, a second-grade teacher at the nearby Tabernacle Christian School, said about 15 students had arrived before police evacuated the building. Cramer said the children walked in a line down to a nearby Chick-fil-A.
“They were fine,” Cramer said of the students, who had hash browns and drinks while they waited.
Vicki Himmel said when police apologized to her for the inconvenience in her home, she replied that it was nothing considering an officer had been wounded. A Maryland State trooper was shot and injured Tuesday in Woodlawn.
