Police in a Baltimore-area community have shot and killed an African-American woman after a standoff at an apartment complex, police said.
A child was injured in the shootout, and a man was apprehended.
Early Monday morning, police had gone to serve several arrest warrants on two suspects, a man and a woman, at Sulky Court in Randallstown, in Baltimore County, Maryland. Officers heard male, female and children’s voices inside the apartment.
They waited outside the door for around 10 minutes, Police Chief Jim Johnson said during a press conference Monday, and one officer obtained a key to the apartment.
Upon opening the door, they saw the woman, identified as 23-year-old Korryn Shandawn Gaines, aiming a shotgun at them. The officers retreated and called for tactical backup.
“My personnel showed great firearms restraint during this dialogue,” Johnson said.
At around 3 p.m., after several hours of a standoff, the woman threatened officers verbally and with the weapon, according to the police account.
One police officer fired a single shot, to which the suspect fired back. Officers responded with further shots and the woman, as well as a 5-year-old child who had remained in the apartment, were struck.
Unclear who fired round that hit boy
Gaines was killed and the boy is being treated for non-life threatening injuries in an area hospital.
It is not clear, police say, if it was a shot from Gaines’ weapon or a police firearm that struck the child.
It is also not clear whether the police department, which is phasing in body cameras for officers, have footage of the incident. A spokeswoman who addressed reporters after Johnson said that the department was looking to see if any officers were wearing a camera.
The man, who was wanted on a warrant for assault, fled the apartment with a 1-year-old child and was apprehended. He is in custody. The police could not confirm the relationship of the two children to either suspect.
As the region still reels from the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old Baltimore resident who died on April 19 after suffering a spinal injury while in police custody, anger against police violence remains high.
Gaines’ uncle Jerome Barnett, 44, told the Baltimore Sun that his niece “was feisty, but she was smart and she was respectful.”
“My niece is a good person; I never knew her to be a rowdy person.”
Neither Johnson nor the spokeswoman who followed him could recall whether Monday’s killing was the first police shooting death in Baltimore this year.
CNN affiliate WBAL reports that it is the county’s third officer-involved shooting of 2016, and the first fatal officer-involved shooting of the year.
Social media anger
Following the death of another African-American at the hands of police, anger spilled out on social media pages.
Under scrutiny was the police uncertainty over body cameras. “I don’t buy their story, ‘they don’t know if any police officer was wearing body cams,'” said one Twitter user.