It’s really a worst case scenario. Two Prince George’s County, MD firefighters along with a civilian were shot by the resident of a home as they were making a forced entry to check on that resident. The civilian who was shot with the firefighters had called 911 saying they thought the resident of that home needed help.
The fire department showed up, knocked on the door and got no answer. The decision was made to force entry, and apparently the homeowner then mistook the firemen for home invaders and opened fire. As soon as they realized their mistake they stopped firing and surrendered to police.
Given that one firefighter was taken to Southern Md Hospital (not known as a trauma center) it is likely that firefighter won’t make it - not due to lack of effort by the hospital but just in the years of my experience covering this kind of thing a local transport is almost always futile.
Update: sadly as expected one of the firefighters, a 39 year old 13 year veteran, died tonight. The other is in surgery at Baltimore’s Shock Trauma center.
Yesterday a Maryland State Trooper was critically injured in a bizarre accident in the county leaving him fighting for his life.
And a few weeks ago a Prince George’s County police officer was killed during a strange shootout with a guy who opened fire at a police station while the shooter’s brothers filmed the event.
Don’t the police and/or sheriffs in Prince George County themselves have a long-standing reputation of being bloodthirsty and trigger-happy – and largely immunized by the laws there?
That I believe is a pretty well earned reputation over the past many years, however the administration, police and State’s attorney(s) have done a very good job in the last 5 years of cleaning up their act and maintaining a transparent government.
To the point that most of us news gatherers prefer dealing with PG these days, which is amazing to be sure.
Fairfax County VA is a lot more suspect in it’s dealings with the public these days than PG.