A police chopper hovered overhead as tactical team members scoured the York Road corridor in Monkton after a man who moved into an apartment with his girlfriend one day, went berserk during an apparent domestic dispute the next.
"All of the sudden I heard a gun. I thought I heard a gunshot,” said Vicki VanVoorhis, who lives next door, “It just escalated and then I heard glass and they were running and banging against my wall."
Police responding to a call for a welfare check soon learned it was much, much more.
"The man and his girlfriend were in an apartment when all of the sudden, he pulls out a handgun and he just starts shooting around the apartment,” said Cpl. John Wachter with the Baltimore County Police Department, “She was injured during the incident, but very fortunately she was not shot and neither was anyone else."
The girlfriend was able to wrestle the gun from the man who then began running erratically to nearby homes and businesses, smashing windows and entering the Mount Carmel Animal Hospital across the street where veterinarian Matt McGee would later assess the damage.
"We saw that there was broken glass in one of the exam rooms and that's where he had entered. Evidently, he had thrown a rock through one of the windows and then climbed through the window,” said McGee, “In the process, he cut himself in several places, because there's blood and bloody handprints and bloody footprints all throughout the hospital where he went."
Ultimately, after an extensive search of the neighborhood and surrounding countryside that took more than six hours, the TAC team unit tracked the unidentified suspect down where he had doubled back to this trailer behind the apartment.
"He said he saw the window moving, and I said, 'I know he's out there!' I knew he was out there," said VanVoorhis.
Police are withholding the suspect's name until he can be treated for his injuries, questioned and formally charged.
