By Meredith Somers
Associated Press
MILLERSVILLE, Md. — There was a break in the case of a man who fired shots on several occupied vehicles and the headquarters of the National Security Agency when he returned to the scene of the first shooting, police said Wednesday.
Hong Young, 35, of Beltsville, was arrested near Arundel Mills mall, where shots were fired Feb. 24. A man driving away from a gas station near the mall was injured by glass shot out from his car, police said.
Shots were also fired on vehicles on a busy highway, near a movie theater and on the NSA building. The locations were within a 12-mile radius in the Baltimore-Washington suburbs. No one was seriously hurt.
Young was taken into custody Tuesday night when police spotted a 1999 Lincoln Town Car that looked suspicious in a parking lot because the store near the mall was closed, police said. The car was also spotted at some of the other shootings.
No other details about Young were immediately released. Police said in a statement they didn’t think the shootings were terrorism-related, and they were still investigating the motive for the shootings.
Police planned a news conference for Wednesday afternoon.
Police pulled Young over near the mall and saw a .380 semi-automatic handgun and shell casings that linked him to the NSA shooting and other recent shootings, Anne Arundel County police said in a statement. Four shootings were linked through ballistic evidence, said Lt. Jarriel Jordon, a spokesman for the Prince George’s County Police. Another Prince George’s police spokesman, Pfc. Michael Owen, said the gun used in the shootings, a semi-automatic pistol, was at his department’s lab.
Anne Arundel police charged Young with attempted murder, assault and gun charges in the shooting near Arundel Mills.
Following the mall shooting, there were reports of shots fired Monday near a Walmart in Laurel and outside the AMC movie theater at the Mall in Columbia.
Police say that on Tuesday, Young fired on a truck on the Inter-County Connector in Prince George’s County. One man was injured by breaking glass from his vehicle and was treated at a hospital and released. Police found a bullet fragment on the clothing of another man in the vehicle.
Later Tuesday, the NSA reported damage to one of its buildings.
The four linked shootings were the ones near Arundel Mills, outside the Mall in Columbia, on the connector and near the NSA, Prince George’s police said in a statement.
The department tweeted Wednesday that officers were executing a search warrant at Young’s home.
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