A Baltimore police officer shot a man on Thursday afternoon, October 22, after the man fled on foot and pointed a weapon at the officer near the Erdman Shopping Center in East Baltimore, police said. The man is in critical condition.
Col. Ryan Lee said at a news conference that the officer, who was working overtime on crime suppression because of concerns in and around the neighbourhood, approached a man walking near Erdman Avenue around 12:16 p.m. The man fled, the officer chased him on foot, and at one point the man turned and pointed a weapon at the officer, who responded by shooting him.
Police recovered a semiautomatic handgun from the scene in the 3900 block of Erdman Avenue, in the Belair-Edison neighbourhood. Lee said it is unclear whether the man fired the weapon. The officer was not injured.
Mayor Brandon Scott, who responded to the scene, said: “This is a traumatic incident for this neighborhood. We will not have individuals willingly walking around carrying firearms and pulling a firearm out in a place right next to a library, right next to a childcare center where there could have been children or elderly there.”
Dozens of officers and detectives spread across the parking lot outside the shopping centre and along Erdman Avenue, where the street was covered in crime tape with more than a dozen markers for shell casings. The 3800 and 3900 blocks of Erdman Avenue were closed and the public was asked to avoid the area. Shoppers coming in and out of the Save-A-Lot watched the investigation unfold.
The shooting also struck an election operation by pure chance. Officers removed ballot boxes from a bullet-riddled white Toyota Camry at the scene, but officials said the boxes were unrelated to the shooting. Clifford Tatum, director of the Baltimore City Board of Elections, said a contractor retrieving ballots from the drop box at 3801 Erdman Avenue was an innocent bystander in the vicinity when the shooting occurred: “The contractor was uninjured. All ballots that were in the contractor’s possession have been retrieved by the Board of Elections and are secure.”
Thursday’s shooting was the 10th by Baltimore police this year — the most times officers have opened fire since 2016, when there were 11. Lee said the officer had been assigned to the area after a fatal shooting in the neighbourhood earlier in the week. Staff from the State’s Attorney’s Office were on the scene with detectives who were reviewing body camera footage, and the investigation is ongoing. Police had not released the man’s name as of Thursday afternoon.
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