Teen charged, jailed in officer’s slaying

PERRY HALL, Md. — A 16-year-old who was supposed to be on house arrest in an auto-theft case 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.

Harris has been charged as an adult in the Monday killing of Baltimore County Police Department 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 burglarizing a nearby home, 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 on the cul-de-sac in the suburban Perry Hall community northeast of Baltimore, prosecutor William Bickel said during the hearing.

According to a probable-cause statement filed Tuesday, Harris told a detective that he “drove at the officer” and then abandoned the Jeep a short distance away.

The three teens — ages 15, 16, and 17 — were in custody but had not yet been identified or formally charged. Scott Shellenberger, the state’s attorney for Baltimore County, said at a news conference that authorities believe all three can be charged with felony murder in Caprio’s death.

AP/DAVID McFADDEN Flowers on the sidewalk serve as a memorial for a police officer killed Tuesday in Perry Hall, Md.