FREDERICK, Md. (AP) — A state trooper fatally shot a man in a confrontation Monday after the sport utility vehicle the man was driving rammed a police cruiser at a gas station, police said.
The shooting happened when a state trooper went to the Sheetz gas station in Frederick, about 50 miles west of Baltimore, and spotted a Lincoln Navigator with expired tags, state police spokesman Greg Shipley said. When the trooper called in the information about the SUV, he learned that it had been stolen in an armed robbery Sunday night in Baltimore, he said.
The trooper requested backup and a second trooper from the nearby aviation command responded. When they approached with their emergency lights on, the man got into the driver’s side of the SUV, Shipley said.
The troopers approached on foot and told him to stop, but he did not, Shipley said. Instead, the man accelerated toward the street and rammed into a responding Frederick police officer’s cruiser as it pulled up. The cruiser was hit on driver’s side door and pushed over a curb and into the grass, pinning the officer inside, he said.
Meanwhile, the man in the SUV jumped out while it was still moving and was shot in a confrontation with the aviation trooper, Shipley said. The trooper, who is a flight paramedic, administered care, but the man was pronounced dead on the scene, Shipley said.
The Frederick officer was taken to a hospital. None of the troopers or anyone at the gas station was injured.
Dominic Rosso, who works at a doughnut shop across the street, said he heard the collision, followed by four shots. He said that when he looked outside, “the whole Sheetz lot was crawling with cop cars.”
The shooting occurred Monday morning. The gas station remained closed into the afternoon, with yellow-crime scene tape surrounding it. Traffic was detoured around a block-long section of Monocacy Boulevard near the road’s intersection with Interstate 70.
Baltimore police reported that when the car was stolen Sunday, the thief showed the owner a handgun in his waistband and told him to back off, Shipley said. It’s not clear if the man who was shot by police was the same person who stole the SUV, he said.
The trooper who fired his weapon is on routine administrative leave, Shipley said. The man who was shot, who has not been identified, was black and the aviation trooper is white.
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Associated Press writer Sarah Brumfield contributed to this story from Washington, D.C.
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