An otherwise routine traffic stop near the intersection of Loch Raven Boulevard and Putty Hill Avenue turned into something far more dangerous in a matter of seconds as the trooper moved towards the car he'd pulled over.
"As he approached the vehicle, he saw that the driver had a silver handgun tucked into his pants,” said Greg Shipley with the Maryland State Police. “He immediately took action to try to control that driver by handcuffing the driver while he was still in the vehicle. The he tried to remove the driver from the car."
At that point, the driver resisted somehow managing to fight off the trooper, grab the steering wheel with his cuffed hands and drive away still in possession of the handgun that had prompted his arrest in the first place.
Officers ultimately located 27-year-old Marcus Lennon at a residence in Parkville, but the weapon, which led to the confrontation was nowhere to be found.
"As of right now, the handgun has not been recovered,” said Shipley. “It was not recovered initially upon his arrest and investigators through the day today were obtaining a search warrant to search the residence where he was located, and we'll be continuing the search for that handgun, but it's possible it was discarded somewhere in the hours after he fled."
While handcuffed suspects rarely drive away from an attempted arrest, in this case, police say the law enforcer sidestepped a situation where deadly force may have quickly become an option.
"The trooper is confronted with an individual who has a deadly weapon,” said Shipley. “There's a lot happening at that moment---a lot going through his mind, and he reacted very quickly and attempted to control that suspect so that suspect would have less of an ability to get to that weapon and then have this accelerate into a deadly force situation."
Lennon is named in a warrant for second degree assault on the trooper and other charges will be forthcoming.
