LANDOVER
– A gunman has opened fire on a police station in the Maryland suburbs of
Washington, D.C., killing one officer in what authorities called an unprovoked
attack before the assailant and a second suspect were arrested.

The
accused gunman was wounded in the ensuing shootout with several officers
outside the station but was expected to survive, Prince George’s County Police
Chief Henry Stawinski told reporters hours later.

The
second suspect, who was believed to have accompanied the shooter but fled the
scene when the gunfire began, was taken into custody about 30 minutes later
following a search of the area, Stawinski said.

Neither
suspect was immediately identified.

The
police chief said he could offer no explanation for what might have
precipitated the attack on the District 3 police station, which lies adjacent
to county police headquarters in Landover, Maryland, about 13 kilometres east
of Washington.

“It
wasn’t about anything,” Stawinski told reporters at a news conference
outside the hospital where the slain undercover officer, Jacai Colson, 28, was
declared dead. Colson, a four-year veteran of the force, had been rushed to the
hospital by a fellow officer in the back of a squad car.

“This
man launched an attack on a police station and engaged several Prince George’s
County police officers in a gunfight, to which they responded heroically,”
Stawinski said.

He
called the late-afternoon attack unprovoked, adding: “My understanding is
he opened fire on the first officer he saw and then continued that conduct as
officers became aware of what was going on, and then several officers engaged
him.”

One
eyewitness was quoted in The Washington Post as saying she heard the sound of
what she thought were firecrackers outside, then looked out her window to see a
man dressed in black firing a handgun at the police station.

“He
fired one shot, and then he started pacing back and forth, then fired another
shot,” Lascelles Grant, a nurse who lives nearby, told the newspaper.
Grant said she then saw police officers pouring out of the station.

Police
said the second suspect was under questioning and no other individuals were
believed to have been involved in the incident. According to the Post,
authorities described the second suspect as the gunman’s brother.

John Teletchea, president of the
Fraternal Order of Police union local, called the fallen officer a “cop’s
cop.”

– Reuters