Police ID West Baltimore man as suspected shooter killed by officers Thursday near Power Plant Live!
Baltimore Police fatally shot a man Thursday night at an Inner Harbor parking garage after he allegedly shot a civilian then pulled a gun on officers.
Police identified the man Friday as Benjamin Tyson, 35, of the Mosher neighborhood in West Baltimore. He died at the hospital.
Tyson allegedly shot and wounded a 23-year-old man who was in stable condition at the hospital Friday, police said. They said Tyson’s gun misfired when he took aim at officers.
The violence occurred shortly before 9:30 p.m. in a popular tourist area lined by shops and restaurants near Power Plant Live!, just as workers were headed home from the Underground Pizza Co., which opened late last year.
“It is a generally safe area just because of the presence of the police,” owner Evan Weinstein said Friday. “That is the first incident we had seen since we opened so I have not really thought much about it today. It is not a random act of violence, it sounds like it was an interaction between police and someone suspected of doing something.”
Thursday night, police officers were patrolling the area when a civilian flagged them down near the intersection of East Pratt Street and Market Place. A man had just been shot, and one officer treated the wounded person while another officer chased the suspected shooter.
The suspect ran into a parking garage about a block away at 600 E. Lombard St.
“The officers ordered the suspect to put his hands up, at which time, the suspect produced a handgun and attempted to fire the weapon. It is believed that the handgun misfired. At least two officers fired their weapons, striking the suspect,” police wrote in a news release issued Friday.
Police Commissioner Michael Harrison arrived at the scene Thursday night and said he watched the officers’ body camera footage. The commissioner said the suspect — later identified as Tyson — ran up the ramp of the Harbor Parking Garage and turned around to shoot. Harrison believes the gun misfired.
“Having reviewed bodycam footage personally, with our mayor, with our city administrator, with our deputy commissioner, we can say that our officers were being proactive and doing exactly what the citizens of Baltimore expect,” Harrison said at the scene.
Online court records show Tyson had a history of gun, assault and drug possession charges and the cases were dismissed or resulted in probation.
Police have said they expect to release the officers’ body camera publicly in the coming days. In routine procedure, the officers who opened fire are re-assignedpendinganinternal investigation.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott reminded people to keep their thoughts with Tyson’s grieving family. But he also praised the officers for their quick action.
“This is another example of our police officers being where they needed to be,” he said. “They stopped and rendered aid and tried to apprehend the suspect.”
Tyson becomes the second man shot and killed by law enforcement in Baltimore this month. Dontae Green was killed in a shootout in a West Baltimore rowhouse Feb. 4. A U.S. marshal was critically injured as police say Green opened fire on marshals from inside a closet. The marshals had been after him for a shooting in a North Baltimore grocery store five days earlier.
Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. announced Friday that the jurisdiction would begin offering Uber rides for residents without transportation to get to COVID-19 vaccination appointments, as well as start providing mobile clinics for thousands in the county who are homebound.
Olszewski made the announcements while speaking at the opening day of a new vaccination clinic at the Community College of Baltimore County’s Essex campus, the county’s third clinic.
“We want no barriers to individuals wanting the vaccine,” said Della Leister, the county’s deputy director of health, noting that she began her public health career working as a nurse for homebound clients.
Residents who have been certified by their physicians as homebound can sign up as such when they complete Baltimore County’s vaccine registration form. Leister said the county already has more than 10,000 of those applicants, who will be screened before getting contacted to schedule their vaccinations.
The county health department has partnered with the Baltimore County Fire Department to travel to residents’ homes and administer vaccines.
County residents with an appointment but lacking a means of transportation to get to it can call 311. CountyRide staff will schedule an Uber ride for the residents to get to their appointments, and once they’re vaccinated, staff at the clinics will help schedule their rides home.
The county is paying for the effort with funds from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.
Baltimore County ranks ninth among Maryland’s 24 jurisdictions with 14.75% of its population having received at least one dose of vaccine.
Olszewski said he expected that number to rise thanks to Friday’s clinic.
The CCBC site joins the county’s other clinics in Randallstown and at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium. The county will explore adding new clinics, Leister said, including smaller sites that might be more comfortable for residents who have been especially cautious about leaving home during the nearly yearlong pandemic.
CCBC President Sandra Kurtinitis was proud to see the school involved in vaccinating the county’s residents.
“‘Community’ is our first name,” she said. “When the county executive calls, we are right there to help in every way that we can.”
Even as the county added another distribution site, Olszewski lamented that they couldn’t be used to their full capacity. The Timonium site is capable of administering “upwards of a thousand doses an hour,” he said, but the supply of vaccine from the federal government and the allocation from the state government mean Baltimore County gets only 5,000 doses a week, he said.
“We know it’s not happening as fast as many would like,” Olszewski said. “It is certainly not as fast as I would like, but we continue to efficiently disperse the limited supply of vaccines that we do receive.
“We’re ready. We have so much capacity. As [Gov. Larry Hogan] said when he toured our mass vaccination site in Timonium last, ‘These are like Ferraris. They just need gas.’ So we’re ready for the gas.”
Asked indirectly about Hogan’s comments that Baltimore City “had gotten far more [doses] than they really were entitled to,” Olszewski said he understood that the supply was limited but all Marylanders are deserving of a vaccine if they want one.
“We know there are logistical challenges across the state and in the federal government in terms of the supply, but let me be clear: Everyone is entitled to a vaccine regardless of where they live, whether it’s Baltimore City, Baltimore County,” Olszewski said. “If you are Marylander, you should be entitled to a vaccine.”
The federal government warned impatient governors against relaxing pandemic control measures Friday, saying that a recent steep drop in U.S. coronavirus cases and deaths “may be stalling” and “potentially leveling off at still a very high number” — a worrisome development that comes as more cases of concerning new variants have been found and could suggest that a return to normalcy is not yet quite as near as many Americans had hoped.
“Things are tenuous,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a White House briefing on the pandemic. “Now is not the time to relax restrictions.”
Her warning was bolstered by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top epidemiologist, as the Biden administration scrambled to stay ahead of a new wave.
According to a New York Times database, virus cases across the United States appear to be leveling off from the steep decline that began in January, with figures comparable to those reported in late October. Cases have slightly increased week over week in recent days, although severe weather limited testing and reporting in Texas and other states the previous week, and not all states reported complete data on the Presidents Day holiday.
The seven-day average of new cases was 77,800 as of Thursday.
While deaths tend to fluctuate more than cases and hospital admissions, Walensky said at the briefing Friday, the most recent seven-day average is slightly higher than the average earlier in the week. The seven-day average of newly reported deaths was 2,165, as of Thursday.
“We at CDC consider this a very concerning shift in the trajectory,” she said.