A Baltimore County police officer shot and killed a knife-wielding Reisterstown man suspected of stabbing to death his ex-girlfriend hours earlier in his home, authorities said.
Police went searching for Russell C. Barnes, 43, Monday evening after he dialed 911 from a cell phone to say he?d killed someone, Cpl. Michael Hill said. Authorities traced the phone to his house, in the 100 block of Westminster Road, and discovered Jamie A. Nichols, a 43-year-old mother of three, dead on the first floor, Hill said.
Barnes was shot about two hours later, at 7:22 p.m., by an unidentified officer who spotted the man walking along Ivy Mill Road and pulled over to him, Hill said. Turning around with a knife, Barnes charged at the officer, who “several times” told him to drop the weapon “and he did not,” Hill said.
Barnes was flown to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center and later died, police said.
Two cars were parked in front of the Westminster Road home Tuesday morning, and a pair of boots sat beside the welcome mat at the front door, but no one answered.
A man picked up Nichols? home telephone and declined to comment to a reporter, saying, “We?re getting ready to move out of this residence.”
“I fear for my family?s safety,” the man said before hanging up.
Barnes was found guilty this year of driving while impaired by alcohol in Carroll County and was set to be sentenced in March. He had several district court cases in the past 12 years.
Nichols? death comes at the end of an apparently difficult year for her: She lost child custody and reportedly said she had received death threats after Maryland State Police discovered cocaine in a May raid on her home, according to court records.
Family members told authorities that Nichols was a “good mother” until she began using drugs. Nichols begged her eldest daughter, then 11 years old, in a June 28 e-mail included in the court file not to report that she and her sisters were neglected.
“I have always been responsible and now I am put into a position where I can?t make it no matter how hard I try,” Nichols wrote. The wrong people “gave me this drug and it took my pain and problems away for a little while.”
Fall into drugs “and your life is changed,” said attorney Leonard Levine, who worked on the custody case. “It’s a terrible situation, a terrible story.”
