BALTIMORE — A Baltimore police detective is in critical condition after a gunman shot him in the head, Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said.
The detective, an 18-year veteran with the Baltimore Police Department, was investigating a killing Wednesday afternoon in west Baltimore when he approached a man who later shot him in the head, Davis said.
The detective was taken to the University of Maryland Medical Center, where he was on life support in the intensive care unit, police and hospital officials said Wednesday night.
Thomas Scalea, head of the hospital’s trauma center, said his staff is doing everything it can “to keep him stabilized and to take care of the injury to his brain.”
In a tweet, police asked the community to “say an extra prayer for the officer and the officer’s family.”
Police were searching for the gunman Wednesday night. They said the suspect was an adult black male who wore a black jacket with a white stripe.
“What I want to describe this person as is cold and callous,” Davis said.
Following the shooting, the FBI’s Baltimore field office announced a $64,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooting suspect.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said the suspect “will be found, charged and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
“The Baltimore Police Department has our full support as they track down this violent criminal and bring him to justice,” Hogan said in a statement.
Mayor Catherine Pugh and other city leaders gathered outside the hospital Wednesday night, urging residents to help stop violence in Baltimore.
“We cannot have violent criminals running our streets,” Pugh said. “Too many guns on our streets. Too many victims.”
The mayor’s plea comes following several city and grass-roots initiatives to curb violence in the past few months such as citywide ceasefire weekends. As of Thursday, the number of homicides in the city for 2017 was 308, compared with 318 for all of last year, according to a tally by The Baltimore Sun.
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