Officials ID man killed by police at shopping center
Baltimore County police identified a man who stabbed four people with a hunting knife and beat another at the Hunt Valley Towne Centre before being shot to death by officers as a Northeast Baltimore resident.
Police said Sunday that Jamaal R. Taylor, 31, of the 6000 block of Amberwood Road in the Moravia-Walther neighborhood was fatally shot by officers near the busy shopping complex’s McCormick Road entrance.
They said he attacked three people inside Hunt Valley Wine Liquor & Beer, stabbed a fourth person outside a nearby store, and wounded a fifth person on the patio of a Noodles & Company restaurant. All were expected to survive.
“Detectives are continuing the investigation into the series [of ] incidents, including obtaining additional surveillance video in an effort to piece together a timeline of Taylor’s actions at the shopping center yesterday afternoon,” police said Sunday in a news release.
The attacks came on a warm Saturday afternoon, disrupting the normal weekend activity at the suburban mall, a place of boutique shops and restaurants.
By Sunday, shoppers had returned to the site.
Farzi Yaghoobi, who lives in Northern Virginia, says she visits the mall all the time with her mother, who is in her 80s and lives in Lutherville.
She called the stabbings “troubling, to say the least.”
Tom Wright and Dianne Doccolo, who live in Phoenix, Maryland, ate salads for lunch Sunday outside Panera Bread, across from the liquor store where the attacks began the day before. What happened sounded “bizarre," they said, but the couple didn’t let it keep them from enjoying their Sunday afternoon.
“What’re the odds it would happen two days in a row?” Wright said.
“It’s just like anywhere else,” Doccolo said. “I avoid crowds, but you can’t avoid life.”
Taylor was previously sentenced to three years of probation after pleading guilty to assault in 2012, according to online court records. He pleaded guilty to burglary in 2011, records show. And he was sentenced to two months in prison in 2007, at age 19, for a handgun charge, records show. His family could not be reached for comment.
Security guards escorted Taylor from the liquor store and off mall property Saturday before the attacks, but he returned about 1:30 p.m. and was aggressively demanding money and brandishing the hunting knife, which had a three-inch blade, according to police.
Alicyn Ames, a spokeswoman for Greenberg Gibbons, which developed and owns the Hunt Valley Towne Centre, confirmed that on-site security first responded to escort Taylor away, then called county police when he returned. She referred further questions to police.
“We’re really glad and relieved there were no life-threatening injuries to our guests,” Ames said.
Anyone, including drivers or pedestrians, who saw the attacks or saw the police shooting is asked to call 410-307-2020.