A man was shot at lunchtime Tuesday in the parking lot of a bustling Nottingham shopping center, Baltimore County police said.
The victim had one gunshot wound to a lower extremity in the incident at Fullerton Plaza in the 7900 block of Belair Road, police said. He was taken to a hospital and is expected to survive.
Officers arrested the suspect six minutes after the shooting on Rossville Boulevard nearby, police said, and charges were pending Tuesday afternoon.
Officers were called to an area of the parking lot behind a McDonald's and an International House of Pancakes, where the shooting happened at about 12:30 p.m.
Police don't yet know the motive, department spokesman Cpl. John Wachter said. He said the large number of people in the area helped quickly identify and arrest the suspect.
"Witnesses are our best evidence," Wachter said. "Obviously, you have two restaurants nearby, you have a shopping center right here and another shopping center across the street. So there were plenty of eyes and ears in the community."
Mike Namvar, manager at IHOP, said a customer rushed inside just after the shooting and told the people near the front door to stay in the restaurant.
Namvar said he quickly locked the doors, then checked the restaurant's cameras to see whether the shooting had been caught on film.
He said he peeked out the back door and saw a witness talking on a cellphone, then ventured out farther and saw the victim sitting on the ground. He watched as responders arrived to tend to the victim's injuries.
"With today's climate, it's definitely a scary thing to have going on," Namvar said.
It was "the last thing you think of" to happen during a lunch rush, Namvar said, but he immediately felt a sense of responsibility for his 11 employees and dozens of customers.
"Working here, I'm part of a community," he said. "It was touching to see pedestrians trying to help the guy."
Detectives remained at the parking lot hours later, looking for evidence and putting the victim's blue Nike jacket into an evidence bag.
Ryan Walton, an employee of Chesapeake Sign Co., and a co-worker had been putting up a display for a new Weis Markets scheduled to open in the plaza next fall. The two went inside nearby Michelin Tires when they heard the gunshot, he said.
Walton said he wasn't surprised by the shooting.
"I've been stuck up before," he said.
Sharon Rowe, 34, said she grew up in the area and recently moved to Dundalk with her husband and four kids. The neighborhood has gone downhill with crime, she said, and the family had four dirt bikes stolen from them before the move.
After previous violent crime in the area, Rowe said she told her 16-year-old son, an avid skateboarder, to be inside by dark.
"It's absolutely terrible. It's a disgrace," Rowe said. "Growing up here, I could run the streets all day long."
An earlier version misstated the street number of the shopping center. The Sun regrets the error.
