Three juveniles and an 18-year-old were arrested Tuesday after a Washington, D.C., police officer said he was shot at while responding to a burglary at a Metropolitan Police Department evidence lot in Anne Arundel County.
According to an arrest report from the D.C. police agency Tuesday evening, a group of five people forced their entry into the temporary evidence lot, part of a D.C. government complex including a juvenile detention facility in Laurel. The five were confronted by a D.C. officer who reported he was shot at by multiple suspects and returned fire.
No injuries were reported, according to the D.C. police agency. Two juveniles were arrested at the scene, and the other three suspects fled, the report said.
Anne Arundel County Police said they searched for suspicious vehicles in the area of the shooting and found two teens sitting in a car at Reserve Boulevard and Route 198, investigators wrote in charging papers.
Police searched the teens, 18-year-old Brian Celestino Bautista and a 16-year-old boy, and found a fully loaded handgun in the car, as well as 15 containers of cocaine in the 16-year-old’s pockets, charging papers say.
A witness identified Bautista as one of the suspects from the break-in at the evidence lot, police wrote in charging papers.
Both were arrested on Anne Arundel County-based handgun and drug charges. At the teens’ bail review Wednesday, their respective lawyers said their clients were not the suspected shooters.
“Based on the information we have, the shots were fired in [the 16-year-old’s] direction,” a public defender representing the juvenile said. He noted that the handgun had not been fired, as it was fully loaded.
Breaking News Alerts
Bautista’s attorney, Mark Schuman, said his client wouldn’t have stayed in the area of the shooting if he had been involved.
“If he was concerned about the gunfire, he would have left,” Schuman said.
He said Bautista is a senior at Patterson High School in Baltimore and works as a cook at a South Baltimore taphouse.
“I don’t want to send this gentleman down the wrong direction” by keeping him incarcerated, Schuman said.
Both lawyers noted that their clients fully cooperated with police.
Anne Arundel District Judge Thomas V. Miller III ordered that both teens be held without bail. Bautista is being held at the Jennifer Road Detention Center, and the 16-year-old chose to be held in a youth facility.
The teens arrested at the impound lot were taken into custody and sent to the D.C. police’s Youth Processing Center.