Independent Investigations Division will look into Baltimore County police shooting in White Marsh

The unit of the Attorney General’s Office tasked with scrutinizing police killings will investigate a Baltimore County Police shooting Tuesday that left a man in critical condition.

The Independent Investigations Division of the Maryland Office of the Attorney General investigates deaths involving police or incidents where a civilian’s injuries are likely to result in death. The man who was injured after a Baltimore County Police detective fired into his vehicle during an attempted arrest Tuesday morning outside a Royal Farms in White Marsh.

The attorney general identified the officer who shot the man on Tuesday as Detective J. Trenary, a 16-year veteran of the department. A county salary database lists an officer Jonathan Trenary with 16 years of service.

The police said Trenary is on administrative leave.

Baltimore County Police spokesperson Joy Stewart confirmed that Trenary was one of the officers who fired his weapon in a shooting in Dundalk last year.

In that case, on April 14, four detectives from the Criminal Apprehension Support Team fired their weapons and a 19-year-old man was wounded. The team is assigned to arrest violent offenders who are wanted in Baltimore County and other jurisdictions, Stewart said.

A grand jury found that the officers’ actions were justified, meaning they will not face criminal charges.

In this week’s incident, at about 6:10 a.m. Tuesday, detectives from the Baltimore County Police Department’s Criminal Apprehension Support Team were surveilling an SUV with two people inside in the 10700 block of Pulaski Highway, the Attorney General’s Office said in a news release Thursday.

Police attempted to use a vehicle to block the SUV and arrest the driver, who had multiple outstanding warrants, the release said. The detectives approached the car as the driver attempted to drive away, hitting an unmarked police vehicle. Then, Trenary fired his gun, hitting the driver in his upper body, the attorney general said.

Stewart said Tuesday that the SUV, a Kia, continued traveling and crashed into a pickup truck. A person in the truck was not injured.

The driver was taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries and remains in critical condition. Police also arrested a woman in the Kia.

The woman faces charges of attempted first-degree murder, first-degree assault and use of a firearm in commission of a felony, according to charging documents. The charges stem from an incident alleged to have happened Dec. 23.

Court papers say detectives also apprehended a man at the Royal Farms on Tuesday.

The woman is being held without bond and does not currently have an attorney, according to court records.

Attempts to reach relatives of the man and woman by phone Tuesday afternoon were unsuccessful.

Trenary was not in the police vehicle when he shot at the man, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

The Baltimore County Police Department’s policies forbid officers from firing from a moving vehicle, except “when the occupants of another moving vehicle are using or attempting to use deadly force against an officer and the safety of innocent persons would not be jeopardized.”

Policies for the Baltimore Police Department and the Anne Arundel Police Department are similar, allowing police to fire at or from a moving vehicle only in situations when there is a deadly threat to an officer or another person.

Detectives within the Baltimore County Police Department’s Criminal Apprehension Support Team do not wear body-worn cameras and the police vehicles involved in Tuesday’s incident were not equipped with dashboard cameras, the attorney general said.

Baltimore County Police finished providing its uniformed, “public-facing” personnel with body cameras in 2017, the agency said, but as of August, hundreds of officers still lacked cameras.

Baltimore Sun reporter Dan Belson contributed to this article.