No bail for teen suspect in officer’s death
Judge called the 16-year-old a ‘oneman crime wave’
PERRY HALL, Md. — A 16-year-old who was supposed to be on house arrest for auto theft was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder in the death of a Maryland police officer.
After hearing about Dawnta Anthony Harris’ numerous recent run-ins with the law, a judge called him a “one-man crime wave” and ordered the teen held without bail.
More than 20 police officers were in the courtroom when Harris made his first court appearance by video. Harris has been charged as an adult in the Monday killing of Baltimore County police Officer Amy Caprio, 29, who was responding to a report of a suspicious vehicle.
Harris was waiting in the vehicle, a Jeep, while three other teens were inside a nearby home committing a burglary, according to authorities and court records.
The slain officer’s body camera footage clearly shows Harris accelerating the Jeep at Caprio after she tried to apprehend him in the suburban Perry Hall community northeast of Baltimore, prosecutor William Bickel said during the hearing.
“She fired her weapon. He ran over her,” Bickel said. Harris was apprehended shortly after abandoning the Jeep, which was stolen May 18 in Baltimore, he said.
A yellow lockup jumpsuit appeared baggy on Harris during the hearing in Towson. When asked if he understood the charge he faces, Harris mumbled “yes” as he sat next to his public defender.
Harris has a series of auto theft arrests and a repeated history of running away from juvenile facilities, according to prosecutors. The teen was on house arrest at his mother’s West Baltimore home but ran away May 14, they said.
Judge Sally Chester ordered the ninth-grader to be held at Baltimore County Detention Center, an adult lockup.