Man shot by officers through door threatened to stab, police say
Some new details from police on the fatal shooting in Dundalk Sunday night.
Officers had been called to a man threatening suicide and shot a man they said charged at them with a knife from behind a closed glass storm door. The officer who opened fire was outside on the porch.
This has raised some questions about whether the officers were in danger. Late this afternoon, Baltimore County police said this:
The man's girlfriend had told a 911 operator that the man was armed with knives and was “fixing to get someone hurt,” according to a department spokeswoman quoting from a transcript of the call.
Police dispatchers told the officers responding to the rowhouse that the man’s girlfriend had indicated in her 911 call that the man was threatening suicide and that the “first person who comes near him will get stabbed.”
“He was a very dangerous individual,” said police spokeswoman Elise Armacost.
Armacost said the first officer to respond went up to the porch, saw the man inside holding a large knife with his back to her. She turned the door handle and then the man turned and charged at her. A backup officer fired several times through the door, hitting the man.
Reaction from the family:
A neighbor, Ashley Wetherbee, said police on a porch had no reason to be afraid and shoot through a door at a man inside his own home. She said officers screamed, “‘’Put the weapon down. Put it down’ and just started firing. They were standing outside. I just think it was wrong. There was no attempt to talk him out.”
McCormick had planned to check into a hospital for psychiatric care on Tuesday, Jacobs said. He had been laid off from his job as an electrician, his mother had died and he had broke up and got back together with his girlfriend several times over the past two weeks.
Jacobs said her daughter begged a police dispatcher to call an ambulance: “She wanted someone to come and take him to the hospital and calm him down.”
Categories: Baltimore County, Police shootings
Comments
Is sad
Posted by: john | September 27, 2011 1:07 AM