WOODLAWN, Md. (AP) - A Maryland State Police trooper was "critically ill" after being shot Tuesday while trying to arrest a suspect in a home invasion and abduction last week.
Trooper 1st Class Eric D. Workman, 36, was hit in the left armpit about 5 a.m. as he started up a flight of stairs inside a house in Baltimore County. Police said a man appeared at the top of the stairway and opened fire on Workman and members of the Baltimore Warrant Fugitive Task Force.
Officers returned the fire, fatally wounding Steven T. Jones, 38, of Baltimore, said Greg Shipley, a state police spokesman. Shipley said Jones had an extensive criminal history and court records show arrests dating to at least 1986, including drug and theft charges.
Workman was in critical condition and on life support at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, said Dr. Thomas Scalea, Shock Trauma's physician in chief. Workman, who was wearing a ballistic vest, was struck by a bullet that went through his left chest and into the left side of his abdomen, damaging his left kidney, left lung and the left side of his spleen.
Scalea said Workman underwent surgery early in the morning to stop the bleeding in his abdomen and again early in the afternoon to stop bleeding in his lungs and chest. Surgeons also had to remove the spleen, which had been damaged in an on-duty accident in 1998.
"This is not over by a long, long shot," Scalea said. "We've got to get him through the next hours and days."
Police said the suspect whom officers were trying to arrest was a man who had fled an Eldersburg home Thursday after the home invasion. Two men had burst into the home, restraining the homeowner's son, a daughter and the daughter's fiance with handcuffs and duct tape.
When the homeowner's other son, a 25-year-old man, came to the house, one of the suspects handcuffed him and forced him at gunpoint to go to a check-cashing and bail bonds business in Randallstown where the victim worked. Relatives of the victim notified Baltimore County police, who rescued the victim and arrested Ronald J. Presco, 36, of Baltimore.
The second suspect fled the Eldersburg home before state police arrived.
State police had obtained an arrest warrant for the second suspect, charging him with 15 criminal counts, and contacted the task force for help in trying to find him. When they arrived early Tuesday at the Woodlawn house, they knocked at the door and the owner let them in, according to a state police news release. The officers were told the suspect was upstairs and had begun to head up the stairs when the shots were fired.
It had not been determined how many shots were fired. Another trooper who is a task force member fired his weapon, as did at least one other task force member, state police said. The suspect died at the scene.
At the brick house at the end of a four-house row near the Baltimore city-county border, Christmas decorations dotted the lawn and the windows. Police cruisers and fire trucks swarmed the neighborhood.
Police found a handgun at the scene. They were not sure of the relationship between the suspect and the owner of the house, but said they did not believe the suspect lived there.
Workman was also treated extensively at Shock Trauma in 1998 after a car struck him along the Capital Beltway in Prince George's County, sending him flying 60 feet and into another trooper. Scalea treated Workman then and said Tuesday, "I can't tell you how sorry I am to be in this position again."
Col. Thomas E. "Tim" Hutchins, the state police superintendent, called Workman "one tough trooper" and said he was known for his "dedication and tenacity."
Workman has been a trooper since 1997 and has been highly decorated, Hutchins said. He is assigned to the criminal investigation section of the Westminster barracks.
He has a brother who is a police officer in Fairfax County, Va. The brother was on his way Tuesday to the hospital, and Gov. Robert Ehrlich and Hutchins were also there.
(Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
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