BALTIMORE—A Baltimore hospital went on lockdown on Monday, Feb. 4, after a 24-year-old employee was critically wounded by a gunman near an ambulance bay at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
Lt. Col. Kevin Jones of the Baltimore Police Department said the shooter was arrested with a loaded pistol a few blocks away from the hospital. He said the gunman knows the victim—shot in the face and buttocks—but details about a motive were not immediately available.
Police later said 26-year old Jamar Haughton of Baltimore is charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment, and several firearm-related charges.
“We just know that they are known acquaintances. We do not know exactly what the relationship is,” Jones told reporters outside the trauma unit at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
The chaotic gun violence happened outside the Baltimore hospital shortly after 7 a.m. Monday. After a brief lockdown, the city medical facility resumed normal operations.
Physician-In-Chief Thomas Scalea said the shooting victim was on life support. He declined to say what the employee’s job was other than they worked at the school of medicine. The person’s identity was not disclosed.
“This one is as close to home as it has ever been,” said Scalea outside the Shock Trauma Center that deals with hundreds of gunshot victims each year.
Jones described the shooting outside the hospital as an “isolated” incident that appeared to be targeted. “At no time was the general public at risk,” he said.
Baltimore was able to chip away at its violent crime scourge in 2018, but still exceeded 300 homicides for the fourth year in a row. In 2017, the 342 homicides in the city of roughly 612,000 inhabitants yielded a homicide rate of 56 per 100,000 people, a rate the FBI called well above that of any other large U.S. city.
