SandyMaloneBaltimore, MD – A Baltimore police detective was shot in the head on Wednesday afternoon on the west side of the city.
Police said two homicide detectives were conducting an investigation in west Baltimore when an 18-year veteran of the Baltimore Police Department was shot in the head.
The original distress call from the injured officer’s partner went out at 4:38 in the afternoon on Nov. 15.
“While he was conducting his follow up investigation, he saw a man engaged in suspicious behavior. He approached him. At some point thereafter, our 18-year homicide veteran was shot in the head,” Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said at a press briefing on Wednesday night.
“He is in very, very grave condition right now,” Commissioner Davis said. “They’ve been operating on him around the clock.”
Police officials have not released the name of the detective who was shot in the head.
Residents in the area reported hearing gunfire.
“I was just on my way home, walking through the block, and next thing I knew there was four or five shots,” a resident of the neighborhood named Moody told WBAL.
“It was just four gunshots – back to back to back to back,” he said.
The suspect is described as an African-American man wearing a black jacket with a white stripe.
“We are still at the scene of this crime because we need to make sure we collect every bit of evidence and make sure the shooter is nowhere nearby,” Commissioner Davis said.
“My best guess is there’s more than one other person that’s aware this callous coward, with a gun in his hand, shot a cop in the head tonight,” he said.
The neighborhood where the shooting occurred is known to be crime infested. There have been five shootings on that block this year, WBAL reported.
More than half the houses located in the area are unoccupied and boarded up. Special response teams were having to clear the properties one at a time in their search for the would-be cop killer.
Nearby Howard County and Anne Arundel County were sending additional police units to assist Baltimore Police in their search for the suspect.
There is a $62,000 reward for the identity of “this cold callous killer who shot a police detective in the head while he was just doing his job for the city,” Commissioner Davis said.
Maryland Shock Trauma Surgeon Dr. Thomas Scalea said the detective is “on full life support up in the intensive care unit.”
“He is well known to us. He’s a friend, he’s a colleague, and sadly, now he is a patient,” the doctor told the gathering of reporters.
All the important city and state officials were at the hospital for the press briefing.
“Enough is enough. We have to reclaim our streets and our neighborhoods,” City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young said, as he called for somebody to come forward with information about the shooter.
“And I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired of the crime in Baltimore,” Young said.
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh told reporters, “What I do know is that every neighborhood in this city deserves to be safe … [so] that our police officers can do their jobs.”
“We’re standing here united because we’re praying for this officer, we’re praying for this family, we’re praying for this city,” Pugh said.
The family of the injured police detective lives in Delaware. Pennsylvania State Police assisted in transporting the detective’s wife to Maryland Shock Trauma in Baltimore, where her husband remained in very critical condition Wednesday night.