Man with 2 ‘replica weapons’ shot, killed by security officer
OXON HILL, Md. Sept 12 2021 — A man was fatally shot by a Prince George’s County Police officer Friday afternoon outside a building he had allegedly been banned, according to Police Chief Malik Aziz.
Around 12:40 p.m., Aziz said the man shot and killed had ordered some food that had been delivered to the front desk of a building he had been banned from entering as of Thursday. An officer with the Prince George’s County Police Department who was working a security job at the building ordered the man to leave, but said the man did not comply, according to Aziz.
Aziz said witnesses told him that the officer escorted the man out of the building, where the officer and man got into a verbal altercation, and then a fight. According to police, the man retrieved a bag, pulled out what looked like a handgun and pointed it at the officer.
The officer shouted at the man to drop his gun. Aziz said the man attempted to fire his gun at the officer, but the weapon had a malfunction, and the man threw it into the woods nearby, Aziz said.
The officer tased the man twice to try and subdue the man, neither of which worked, according to Aziz. The man then pulled out a “long gun” and after the officer again attempted to get him to drop the gun and he didn’t comply, the officer fired his own gun at the man multiple times. The man was shot and killed.
Aziz said after an initial investigation at the scene, it was determined that the weapons the man produced were replicas. When asked if they were toy guns, Aziz called them “realistic replicas of weapons.”
“I don’t know if they were sold as toys, but our crime scene investigators believe these are replicas of realistic weapons.”
The police chief also noted that he was told by building personnel that the man shot had a history of “threats and intimidation and behavioral issues,” which led to him being banned from the property.
“The message to residents is that they did exactly what they should have done,” Aziz said. “They alerted the residential managers and told them about the issues and the residential managers took the type of actions you would expect to take … They saw something, and they said something, and it got us to this point.”
The officer who fired his gun was taken to a local hospital for treatment of minor injuries to his hand and face. Aziz said the officer has been with the department for 12 years and is assigned to the bureau of patrol.
The chief did not release the identities of the officer, or the man killed. Aziz said he was unsure if there was bodycam footage from the shooting, as the officer had left the scene to be treated by the time he arrived.
WUSA9 spoke to two residents who live in the building after the shooting occurred. One man requested anonymity. The other man is named Robert Middleton.
Both men offered a similar account of the event they saw happen at the building.
Middleton said he saw the man walk away from the building, down a long ramp, as the uniformed officer followed him.
He said it appeared to him that the officer was agitating the situation.
“In my opinion, the officer was kind of rude to the man,” Middleton said. “Egging him on, wanting to fight the man.”
He said the man and the officer then got into an altercation near a bus stop along Owens Road. After that, Middleton said he heard multiple gunshots.
“He emptied the gun on him,” he said. “I heard about 11 shots.”
WUSA9 reached out to the Prince George’s Police Department to get its response to those two residents’ claims about what they saw leading up to the shooting.
The department released the following statement:
“Chief Aziz spoke about this incident this afternoon. This case is under investigation, and we encourage anyone with any information regarding this case to call our detectives at 301-516-5721.”
According to Middleton, the man’s mother lived inside the building. The Prince George’s County government website says the building at 1100 Owens Road is a public housing complex for the elderly and people with disabilities.
