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Five shootings in public places in Maryland said to be linked; 35-year-old charged Five shootings in public places in Maryland said to be linked; 35-year-old charged
(about 4 hours later)
Authorities have charged a 35-year-old Prince George’s County man in connection with one shooting and believe he is also responsible for four more shootings in the region in the past week, including incidents that occurred near a federal government building and along a major highway. The handgun was a ­.380-caliber semiautomatic. The vehicle was a 1999 Lincoln. The alleged shooter, suspected of firing indiscriminately at people and buildings as he roamed by car through a swath of suburban Maryland in the past week, was a 35-year-old former prison guard named Hong Young, now in police custody.
The man was identified as Hong Young of Beltsville, a former Maryland prison officer. He was arrested by Anne Arundel County police. Still to be answered: Why?
Authorities said the motive does not appear to be political in nature or related to terrorism. “We have not gotten into the mind of the suspect,” Anne Arundel County police spokesman T.J. Smith said in announcing Young’s arrest Wednesday. Young is charged with shooting at a motorist Feb. 24 from the driver’s seat of his Lincoln Town Car and is suspected of opening fire Tuesday on two men in a tree-service truck, police said.
At a news conference Wednesday, officials acknowledged that the seemingly random shootings, in which Young apparently fired from inside his car and from the woods along the Intercounty Connector, evoked memories of the deadly Beltway sniper attacks of 2002. They said he also is suspected of firing shots into a Wal-Mart store and an AMC movie theater in the wee hours of Monday, when both businesses were closed, and shooting at a National Security Agency building Tuesday evening.
In four of the five shootings to which Young has been linked, no one was injured. In the fifth, two people were transported to a hospital with non-life-threatening wounds. No one was seriously injured in the incidents.
“We’re all standing up here fortunate that we’re not having to go to anybody’s house and give a death notification. He’s off the street and will be in custody,” Anne Arundel police spokesman T. J. Smith said at the news conference on Wednesday afternoon. “This guy apparently has some . . . issue going on that our detectives continue to follow up on to see exactly what’s going on with him,” said Smith, who was joined by a bevy of law enforcement officials at a news conference at Anne Arundel police headquarters.
The latest shootings occurred Tuesday afternoon, when shots were fired at a National Security Agency building and into traffic along the Intercounty Connector in Maryland. Young, who authorities said was a Maryland correctional officer from January 2012 until he quit in May last year, was driving the blue Lincoln late Monday night when Anne Arundel police, on the lookout for the Town Car, stopped and arrested him “without incident,” Smith said. He said officers found a Bersa .380 pistol in the vehicle.
In addition to the two episodes on Tuesday, law enforcement officials said Young has been charged with a shooting near a shopping center in Anne Arundel County, and is considered the suspect in two other shootings, one near a Wal-Mart in Laurel and the other near a movie theater in Howard County. The handgun has been linked by ballistics tests to four of the shootings, Smith said, and the Lincoln has been tied to the other shooting by video surveillance footage.
Officials said that four of the five incidents were connected based on ballistics testing, and that the fifth was linked by surveillance video showing Young’s vehicle at the scene. In a search of Young’s Colonial-style brick home in Beltsville, Prince George’s County police said, they confiscated 10 more firearms — pistols and long guns — as well as hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a crossbow.
Police in Prince George’s County said the gun that was submitted to their lab, and believed to be involved, is a semi-automatic pistol. “We’re all standing up here fortunate that we’re not having to go to anybody’s house and give a death notification,” Smith said. “He’s off the street.”
At the news conference, Maryland Secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services Stephen Moyer said that Young worked as a correctional officer at a medium-security facility in Jessup from January 2012 to May 2014, when he resigned. Moyer said that there was nothing unusual about Young’s record as an employee. Prince George’s court records show that Young filed papers Sept. 24 seeking a divorce from his estranged wife, Bunnary Ngo. No reason was given for the divorce action, and the case was dismissed Monday because Young did not follow up on his request. He and Ngo were married in a civil ceremony in 2007, according to court records.
Young was arrested without incident and has been cooperating with detectives interviewing him, authorities said at the news conference. He is currently being held at a hospital. Police declined to say why Young needed medical treatment. In a phone interview Wednesday with the Baltimore Sun, Ngo said she has been living in California for several months while Young remained in Beltsville with his mother, according to the newspaper. Ngo said she had not spoken with Young recently.
Prince George’s Police were seen Wednesday morning around 11 a.m. outside a brick home in Beltsville that is listed as an address for Young. The neighborhood was cordoned off with crime tape, and forensics vans were parked in the area. “I am going to divorce him,” she said.
Police said on Wednesday afternoon that they had recovered 10 firearms, including a .233 semi-automatic pistol, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition at the house. They said that Young owned all the weapons legally. She said she spoke by phone several days ago with Young’s mother, who was worried because she did not know his whereabouts.
Records show that Young filed for divorce in September from his wife Bunnary Ngo, whom he married in Prince George’s County in 2007. He did not give any reason for his request for an absolute divorce. The case appears to have been dismissed on March 2, after Young did not follow up on his request. “Everybody was trying to reach him,” Ngo told the Sun.
His wife told the Baltimore Sun that she has been living in California for several months while Young stayed in Beltsville. “I am going to divorce him,” she said. Police searched Young’s home Wednesday, in the 4900 block of Daisey Creek Terrace, but no one answered when a reporter knocked at the front door.
She told the Sun that her husband was not employed, and she could not remember the last time she spoke to him. She heard from Young’s mother, who lives in Beltsville, several days ago. Young’s mother was concerned because he was not returning her phone calls. A neighbor, not acquainted with Young, said he noticed odd behavior by a man in his 30s who lived in the house. “He used to pace up and down the street at all hours of the night,” said the neighbor, speaking on the condition of anonymity for privacy reasons. The man was “in another zone or something,” the neighbor said.
On Young’s street, neighbor Joy Abraham said he didn’t know the suspect’s name, but was friendly with the family — which included grandparents and their grandchildren — that lived at the Beltsville home which police entered Wednesday morning. “You never know what’s in someone’s mind.”
The family who lived at the home seemed peaceful and hardworking, said Abraham, 66, who has been a neighbor for 12 to 15 years. In announcing Young’s arrest, police Wednesday repeatedly harkened back to the October 2002 sniper attacks in the Washington area, voicing relief that no one was severely hurt in the recent shooting spree. The snipers, John Allen Muhammad, who was executed in 2009, and Lee Boyd Malvo, imprisoned for life without parole, terrorized the region for three weeks, shooting 13 people, 10 fatally.
“It is very sad,” Abraham said as police continued to search the home a few houses down. “They just do their work. They don’t bother anybody.” The previous week’s shootings more closely echoed the crimes of Yonathan Melaku, an ex-Marine who roamed Northern Virginia in 2010 firing shots at the Pentagon and other military facilities, including recruiting stations. After pleading guilty to three charges, Melaku was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The shooting for which Young has already been charged is the first in the series, on Feb. 24. He allegedly fired into a man’s car near a Costco. As for Young, “We don’t have any concern or belief that this is related to any kind of terrorism,” Smith said.
In a news release, Anne Arundel County police said that Young is charged with attempted murder and other crimes for that shooting. The first attack connected by police to Young occurred about 7:30 a.m. Feb. 24, when someone in a car fired shots at a 61-year-old motorist as he pulled out of a Costco gas station near the Arundel Mills mall in Anne Arundel.
Police posted a surveillance video showing a sedan that they believe was involved in that shooting near Arundel Mills mall. “Our detectives were able to recover evidence from that scene, including surveillance video,” Smith said. After the video, showing the suspect’s car, was made public, “tips were received, but unfortunately, none of the tips led to an identification.”
In that incident, police said a 61-year-old man was driving on Arundel Mills Boulevard “when a suspect pulled alongside of his vehicle and began shooting at him” after he had left the Costco gas station in the area. In that attack, Young was charged with first- and second-degree assault and using a handgun in a violent crime.
The man’s car was struck several times with bullets, but he was uninjured, police said. Shortly before 3 a.m. Monday, someone fired shots into the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Laurel, 10 miles south of the Costco gas station.
Police said the vehicle involved in the Arundel Mills incident was also seen in surveillance video of a shooting at about 2:50 a.m. on March 2 at a Wal-Mart in Laurel. “At that time, we had no real witnesses,” Smith said. “No victims. And we once again did not have a suspect. Later, surveillance video indicated that the same style vehicle was involved in that shooting, as well. At that point, the coordination efforts started. We knew something was going on and that it was a little bit unusual.”
Then two hours later on that same night, officials said, a member of a cleaning crew at the AMC Theatre at the mall in Columbia reported that shots had been fired toward the theater. No one was injured. He said the next shooting was reported two hours later — in Howard County, 14 miles northwest of the Wal-Mart — after a cleaning crew at the AMC Theatre at the Mall in Columbia heard gunshots. The bullets were fired at the theater’s windows.
On Tuesday, two other shootings unfolded. Then about 2:40 p.m. Tuesday, “in the midst of an ice storm,” bullets pierced the windshield of a Nelson Tree Service truck traveling on the Intercounty Connector in Prince George’s, near Old Gunpowder Road. One of the men was bruised by a bullet fragment, police said, and the other suffered cuts from flying glass.
In the first incident, the window of a truck was struck by gunfire around 2:40 p.m. as the vehicle traveled east on the ICC near Interstate 95 in Prince George’s County. The shot may have been fired from woods nearby, police said. The highway shooting, in Prince George’s, happened 15 miles south of the movie theater.
One man in the truck was bruised by a bullet fragment that was blocked by his clothing; the other man was cut in the face by shards of glass, said Lt. Kevin Ayd of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police on Tuesday. Both were sent to a hospital with injuries that did not appear life-threatening. “As soon as that happened, our detectives responded down there” from Anne Arundel, “and the coordination began once again,” Smith said. “While they were still on scene investigating that, the incident occurred at the NSA building, near National Business Parkway.”
The victims work for Nelson Tree Specialist and were traveling in one of the company’s trucks, said Gary Cooper, an employee of the landscaping business. The parkway, in Anne Arundel, is 12 miles northeast of where the highway shooting occurred. The NSA building is along a stretch of road just east of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, separate from the agency’s Fort Meade headquarters. “It wasn’t the main NSA building that we’re used to seeing in movies and all,” Smith said.
“They were just driving down the road and got shot,” said Cooper, who was on his way to visit the victims at a hospital on Tuesday. “It certainly makes you wonder.” At the news conference, Maryland Secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services Stephen Moyer said that Young worked as a correctional officer at a medium-security facility in Jessup until he resigned last spring. Moyer said that there was nothing unusual about Young’s record as an employee.
Several hours later on Tuesday, about 12 miles away, there was gunfire that struck a building at the NSA campus in Anne Arundel County, a U.S. Park Police spokeswoman said. Young was arrested without incident and has been cooperating with detectives interviewing him, authorities said at the news conference. He is being held at a hospital. Police declined to say why Young needed medical treatment.
The Park Police said no injuries were reported. Hours after the final shooting Tuesday, Anne Arundel police stopped the Lincoln near the Arundel Mills Costco — the site of the first shooting — and put Young in handcuffs.
Authorities provided some details about how Young was apprehended. Peter Hermann, Dana Hedgpeth, Julie Zauzmer and Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.
“As soon as we started to hear about the possibility of this stuff being linked, we kicked every effort we had into overdrive,” Anne Arundel police chief Timothy Altomare said at the news conference.
Police in Anne Arundel County said they were conducting surveillance Tuesday around 10:30 p.m. for the car that was believed to be involved in the Feb. 24 shooting.
Two police officers saw a car fitting the description of the suspect’s vehicle — a 1999 blue Lincoln Towncar — and halted it for a traffic stop in the area of the Costco on Arundel Mills Circle.
The officers saw “evidence in the vehicle that ultimately led to the arrest of the suspect,” according to police in Anne Arundel County. It was not immediately clear what that evidence was.
The vehicle was registered to Young, Smith said at Wednesday’s news conference. He appeared to have fired from inside of it during some of the shootings and not in others; on the ICC, he was standing outside the vehicle in the woods, Smith said. He did not appear to have been living in the vehicle.
Lynh Bui, Paulina Firozi, Peter Hermann, Dan Morse, Martin Weil, Julie Zauzmer and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.