WBAL-TV News-Baltimore
BALTIMORE -- A Baltimore police officer was shot and killed Saturday night by a person he had arrested several days earlier, police said.
Brian Winder, 36, a 10-year veteran, was attacked by two men, one of whom Winder had arrested earlier for selling pirated DVDs and CDs, said Police Commissioner Kevin Clark.
“Tonight I lost a member of my family,” Clark said. “It’s one of those cases that people here need to understand what the men and women in the department do to keep people safe.”
Police declined to release specific details of the shooting, but said Winder was communicating with a dispatcher when he was attacked and shot several times.
He was taken to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Police had a suspect in custody, and were searching for another.
“I’m confident in the detectives in this department,” Clark said when asked about the investigation. But he declined to say how and when the suspect was arrested.
A crowd of police officers, many in plain clothes, with guns in holsters, gathered outside of the hospital, hugging each other and talking.
Police spokesman Matt Jablow said the shooting happened around 9 p.m. inside G&G Village Liquors. The owner of the store, Jong Kin, 47, said he heard shots while he was working in the stockroom, but thought the shooting was outside his store. Kin said police picked up video tapes from the store, but the video equipment wasn’t working.
“The city has suffered another horrible tragedy,” Mayor Martin O’Malley said.
Clark said Winder, a native of Baltimore, was well-liked and well-known in the community. He is survived by his wife and three children.
The last Baltimore police officer killed in the line of duty was Detective Thomas Newman, in November 2002.
A jury sentenced Jovan House in February to life in prison without parole for killing Newman. Newman was killed outside a bar in retaliation for testifying against a suspect in an earlier shooting that wounded the officer, authorities said.