Two Maryland teenagers charged with murder in the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old in Langley Park on Thursday night returned to the scene of the crime hours later and opened fire on an investigating officer, the Prince George’s County Police Department said in a news release.
In an interview, interim police chief Hector Velez said officers are trained to anticipate gunfire on the job when they’re detaining a suspect or driving onto the scene of an ongoing crime. But he cannot remember a time when an officer was attacked while investigating a quiet crime scene.
“You have officers out at the scene that are trying to determine who killed this young man, and in the process . . . you have the same individuals return,” Velez said. “To me, that is brazen. That is unconscionable.”
On Thursday night at 9:15 p.m., police first arrived at the garden-style apartment building in the 8100 block of 14th Avenue to investigate a reported shooting, authorities said. Officers found a wounded 16-year-old inside a vacant first-floor unit. The teen, who has not been identified, was pronounced dead.
Two hours later, at about 11:30 p.m., more than a dozen detectives and investigators were still processing the shooting scene when one officer, alone in a front room of the vacant apartment, heard a noise coming from the back bedroom, Velez said.
The officer, whose name was not released, walked to the bedroom and realized there were people speaking outside the window, authorities said. The officer identified himself and told them to leave, Velez said. They shouted “anti-police statements” back at him, the chief said, before one of the two reached their arm in the window and filed a single shot at the officer. The bullet missed him by a couple of feet, Velez said.
Other officers on scene, who were outside the apartment building, heard the gunshot and saw Sanchez Perez and Jurado flee, the chief said. They quickly apprehended them, police said. Officers did not return fire or discharge their weapons, Velez said.
Online court records did not list attorneys for Sanchez Perez and Jurado in the case.
The chief said the department was shaken by the incident. He said police do not know why Sanchez Perez and Jurado allegedly returned.
“It impacts this office, it impacts this family, but it also impacts their squad,” Velez said.
