What Baltimore police suspected was a barricade situation at a northwest Baltimore home ended shortly after 6 p.m. Sunday, with police entering the residence of a correctional officer slain earlier in the day and finding nobody there.
Baltimore police began investigating what they called a "barricade situation" mid-afternoon at the Northwest Baltimore home of Sharon Jones, 28, a correctional officer killed earlier in the day.
Jones had been a correctional officer since 2004, working in the transportation unit of the Division of Pretrial Detention and Services, said Danielle Lueking, a public safety spokeswoman. Police went to the residence near the Cylburn neighborhood off Greenspring Avenue to search Jones' home. According to police officials, as they approached the house, they found blood on a door.
They think the blood might be linked to Jones' death. She was killed by a gunshot wound to her upper body shortly after 3 a.m. Sunday at the home of a friend on Aisquith Street, police said.
She had worked at Baltimore's Central Booking and Intake Center or at a transfer area, police said.
Police said they believe Jones knew her assailant, but declined to say how, other than that he was an "associate" of hers, and not an inmate.
Police thought a male, identified only as a person of interest, was alone inside the Greenspring Avenue home, and a police SWAT team and negotiators were summoned. As the afternoon wore on, police were unable to contact anyone inside, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said during a media briefing shortly after dark near the scene.
"SWAT made entry into the house. There was nobody there," he said about 7 p.m.
He said police were seeking a search warrant because of the blood on the door in an effort to determine if there was a link between the Aisquith Street home and Jones' home.
"We don't know. We have no idea. We are going to process this forensically," Guglielmi said.
Earlier in the day, police established a command post at the intersection of Greenspring and Dupont avenues and that area of Greenspring was closed to traffic.