A gunman opened fire on a police station in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, on Sunday, killing one officer in what authorities called an unprovoked attack before the assailant and a second suspect were arrested.
The accused gunman was wounded in the ensuing shootout with several officers outside the station but was expected to survive, Prince George’s County Police Chief Henry Stawinski told reporters hours later.
The second suspect, who was believed to have accompanied the shooter but fled the scene when the gunfire began, was taken into custody about 30 minutes later following a search of the area, Stawinski said.
Neither suspect was immediately identified.
The police chief said he could offer no explanation for what might have precipitated the attack on the District 3 police station, which lies adjacent to county police headquarters in Landover, Maryland, about 13km east of Washington.
“It wasn’t about anything,” Stawinski told reporters at a news conference outside the hospital where the slain undercover officer, Jacai Colson, 28, was declared dead.
Colson, a four-year veteran of the force, had been rushed to the hospital by a fellow officer in the back of a squad car.
“This man launched an attack on a police station and engaged several Prince George’s County police officers in a gunfight, to which they responded heroically,” Stawinski said.
He called the late-afternoon attack unprovoked, adding: “My understanding is he opened fire on the first officer he saw and then continued that conduct as officers became aware of what was going on, and then several officers engaged him.”
One eyewitness was quoted in The Washington Post as saying she heard the sound of what she thought were firecrackers outside, then looked out her window to see a man dressed in black firing a handgun at the police station.
“He fired one shot, and then he started pacing back and forth, then fired another shot,” Lascelles Grant, a nurse who lives nearby, told the newspaper. Grant said she then saw police officers pouring out of the station.
Police said the second suspect was under questioning Sunday night and no other individuals were believed to have been involved in the incident. According to the Post, authorities described the second suspect as the gunman’s brother.
John Teletchea, president of the Fraternal Order of Police union local, called the fallen officer a “cop’s cop.”
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan yesterday ordered flags lowered to half-staff in honour of the dead officer.
“The First Lady and I send our sincere prayers to the family and loved ones of Officer Colson, who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to his fellow citizens and community,” Hogan said in a statement late on Sunday that ordered flags lowered to half-staff.
The shooting was the second fatal attack on law enforcement officers in the area in little more than a month. Two Harford County sheriff’s deputies were shot by a gunman at a restaurant near Baltimore on February 10.