An officer shot and wounded an armed man in Dundalk early Tuesday morning in what is being investigated as a potential attempt at officer-assisted-suicide, police said.
Baltimore County Police gave the following account of the shooting: At approximately 12:25 a.m. on the 7700 block of Wise Avenue, the suspect approached two men on a basketball court and asked to borrow a cell phone.
The two men told the suspect they did not have a cell phone and the suspect then left the court, only to return soon after with a gun.
The suspect forced one of the men to a pay phone in a McDonald?s parking lot across the street, where he told the victim to call the police and report a man with a handgun, police said.
An officer arrived to see the victim on the phone and the suspect walking away. The officer pursued the suspect, who turned around and raised his weapon ? which turned out to be a fake pellet-gun that resembled a semiautomatic handgun ? directly at the officer who then immediately fired a shot at the victim?s stomach.
The suspect was taken to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center and is in critical but stable condition, police said.
“We are currently investigating why the suspect would have wanted the victim to call the police and report this,” said Sgt. Vicki Warehime, police spokeswoman.
Warehime said suicide-by-police is “one of the theories we?re investigating.”
Suicide-by-police is when someone deliberately threatens a law enforcement officer with the intention of provoking a lethal response.
There have been four police involved shootings this year that resulted in injury, Warehime said.
Police did not have statistics about officer-assisted-suicide available.
The officer who responded to the scene, a 25-year-old veteran, has been placed on routine leave, police said.
When the suspect is released from the hospital, he will be charged with two counts of first-degree assault, police said. The suspect?s name will not be released until he is officially charged.
