Suspect was holed up in house and pointed rifle at police through window
By Richard Irwin
The Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE, Md. — A Baltimore County man was fatally shot by police when he pointed a rifle out a rear window of his North Point home at two officers who had arrived to investigate a domestic situation, a county police spokesman said tonight.
Police declined to release the man’s identity, but several neighbors identified him as George Walters, 26, of the 8000 block of Gough St. near Rolling Mill Road.
Police were investigating whether the man fired his weapon at officers, said county police spokesman Bill Toohey. He gave the following account:
Shortly after 4 p.m., a woman, identified by police as the man’s girlfriend, called 911 and said he was breaking up the interior of their house with a baseball bat and threatening her.
When two officers from the North Point Precinct’s Community Action Team (CAT) arrived, the woman had already fled the house.
Officers went on his front porch and attempted to talk to the man, but he fled to the second floor and barricaded himself inside a room while armed with a rifle. He later threw a large TV out a second-floor front window that landed on the lawn.
For more than an hour, the man refused to surrender. Police warned neighbors to stay in their homes as the block was cordoned off by patrol cars. Many sat on their front porches and watched the drama unfold. At about 5:15 p.m., the man appeared at the rear bedroom window and pointed a rifle at police who had taken up positions in an alley behind the man’s home.
The two CAT officers fired at the man, who was struck at least once.
With police, medics entered the bedroom where the man lay and pronounced him dead.
Lee Reiman, 40, who lives directly across the street from the man’s house, said he heard the commotion on his scanner and ran down an alley to a spot near the rear of the home when he saw Walters leaning out of a window and firing a rifle toward the ground and waving the weapon at police. Reiman described Walters’ weapon as a large-caliber assault rifle. “I’ve seen them on TV all the time and knew what it was,” the steel worker said.
Toohey declined to identify the officers, but said they would be placed on routine administrative leave pending the outcome of a police investigation into the shooting.
Copyright 2008 The Baltimore Sun