DUNDALK, Md. — We don’t know what exactly set off the unidentified man armed with a shotgun, but it appears one blast hit his next-door neighbor’s car sending Hope Perrodin and her six-year-old daughter running for cover.
“We heard some gunshots coming from the house and we were inside already, so I took my daughter upstairs and I took my daughter into the bathroom and called 911,” said Perrodin.
When police arrived in the 2100 block of Larkhall Road in Dundalk, any hope of talking the man down disappeared in a matter of minutes.
Watch as neighbors react to fatal police-involved shooting
“I came out to go to dinner, which had me outside,” a nearby neighbor, who did not wish to be identified, told us, “The police responded and the gentleman came to the top window with his shotgun pointed at the officers. There was, I believe, five or six officers here and obviously, they opened fire on the window.”
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Left in their wake, a dozen bullet holes in and around the upstairs window, taking down the man and his life in the process.
Friends of the deceased tell us he had lost his father a few years ago and had struggled with drug and alcohol addiction ever since.
“From what I understand, he has… he has psychological issues,” the neighbor told us, “I don’t know what type or what not, but that set him off.”
“I knew him just as a neighbor,” added Perrodin, “You know. Walking in and out. ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ ‘Have a good one.’ Things like that. I didn’t really speak to him much other than that.”
“You didn’t view him as a threat living next door,” we asked.
“No.”
It’s now part of a inquiry that will be conducted by the Attorney General’s Independent Investigations Division, which is charged with reviewing every fatal, police-involved shooting, but at least one witness says the officers no choice, but to open fire.
“It was a barrage of bullets,” the eyewitness told us, “It was not like they shot once or twice, and they were completely justified in what they did. You know a person came to the window with a gun and aimed it at them.”
The police department says, all toll, six officers fired their weapons and all of them have now been placed on routine administrative duty.
