David Linthicum's father and injured county officer testify in attempted murder trial – Baltimore Sun

When John “Whit” Linthicum dialed 911 on February 8, 2023, he was hoping police could help his son, David, who had a gun and wanted to die.

As the first witness in the trial of the 26-year-old, in which he was accused of shooting two Baltimore County police officers, his father testified that he called the police to “get help and defuse the situation.”

“Not to escalate the matter, not to make it worse,” he told jurors in Baltimore County District Court on Tuesday.

But things got worse. When his father and three police officers entered David Linthicum's basement bedroom, the son shot through a wall and hit police officer Barry Jordan with shrapnel or bullet fragments. He then escaped through a sliding glass door. He was on the run from police for two days. During that time, according to prosecutors, he also shot Detective Jonathan Chih and stole his Dodge Ram pickup.

Police eventually surrounded him and arrested him miles away in Fallston in the early morning of February 10. He is charged with five counts of attempted first-degree murder, seven counts of assault, as well as auto theft and weapons offenses.

The litigation was already contentious before the trial, with lawyers on both sides trying to remove each other from the case, citing conflicts of interest or prosecutorial misconduct..

While no one disputes that David Linthicum fired his gun at police officers in February 2023, the two sides offered differing views on Linthicum's intentions and the competence of the police department in their opening statements on Tuesday.

Prosecutors played a video showing the second key event in the case: Drug Enforcement Agent Jonathan Chih spotted Linthicum on the side of Warren Road on February 9 and pulled over, thinking he was a hitchhiker.

After stopping the car, a voice could be heard asking, “Are you here to kill me?” Chih replied, “No, why?” before a volley of gunshots rang out.

With each shot, the sign language interpreter, who was in the courtroom to interpret the proceedings for David Linthicum's mother, made the motion of a gun being moved forward with her hand. Each time Chih cried out in pain, she moved her clawed hand away from her open mouth.

Assistant District Attorney John Cox said Linthicum first fired 12 shots at his father's Powers Avenue home, four more as officers fled up the stairwell, and then fired 14 shots at Chih, emptying the 30-round magazine of his assault rifle.

“He used every bullet at his disposal to take Detective Chih's life,” Cox said.

Cox said Chih and the other Baltimore County officials involved in the case were simply trying to do their jobs and help Linthicum.

Linthicum's attorney, Deborah Katz Levi, argued that police mishandled their response to a person in mental health crisis. She complained that officers put Linthicum's father in a dangerous situation, allowed Linthicum to flee the home and failed to call the mobile crisis unit or crisis negotiators to de-escalate until Linthicum had already fled to Harford County.

“Everyone should be held accountable for what happened that day,” she said.

Levi, the chief of the Office of the Public Defender's special litigation division, described Linthicum as a “sad person” who suffered speech delays and learning difficulties from a young age and was traumatized by his parents' contentious divorce.

“David Linthicum is by no means a violent person, he is a murderer, he is an unfeeling person,” she said.

Body-worn camera footage played multiple times in court Tuesday shows John Linthicum leading three police officers down a flight of stairs into his son's bedroom in their Cockeysville home after using a screwdriver to pick the basement door lock. He told officers to go first because “if anyone gets shot, it should be me.”

Jordan, the officer who said he still has bullet fragments in his body, testified that while the county's mobile crisis unit may be notified of a situation involving a suicidal person, it is the job of patrol officers to ensure the safety of a crime scene and gather more information before calling the team, which includes psychiatrists.

“We have to request them,” Jordan said of the teams. “They are in high demand these days.”

When John Linthicum led the officers into his son’s bedroom, David was lying on the bed with a gun next to him, he said. From the hallway, Jordan quietly yelled a curse word at a police officer and then said, “He has a gun,” according to body camera footage.

Linthicum's father looked at his son with his arms outstretched and said, “What, are you going to shoot me now?” moments before shots rang out, according to the video. Jordan and two other officers turned, ran up the stairs and out of the house.

Jordan testified Tuesday that he watched the wall “crumble” as bullets pierced it, then quickly turned to leave.

“There was no time to do anything else,” he said.

John Linthicum can be heard saying “David, you stupid –” before another volley of shots is fired. As police officers run up the stairs, yelling “shots fired” into their radios, a crashing sound is heard, which John Linthicum says is the sound of him hurling a ceramic bowl at his son, a final attempt to stop him from leaving the house.

John Linthicum told police in an initial interview that his son fired at police, but said Tuesday he did not know where he was aiming. Although one of the attempted murder charges relates to the shots allegedly fired at him, he said he does not believe his son was trying to kill him.

The footage also showed Jordan taking cover outside behind a police vehicle and communicating over the radio for several minutes before John Linthicum apparently left the house unharmed.

“How is that possible? What was he shooting at?” Jordan asked him, surprised.

John Linthicum pointed to the left, where the officers had been standing behind him in the hallway.

Originally published: September 17, 2024 at 18:30