BETHESDA, MD – (CNN) Eulalio Tordil, the man accused of shooting several people at two sites in Bethesda, Maryland, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder, the Montgomery County Police announced Saturday.
Two people died in the Friday shootings and two others were wounded.
Tordil, a federal law enforcement officer, was previously charged with first-degree murder in the Thursday shooting death of his estranged wife, authorities said. He’s being held without bond.
He was taken into custody without incident Friday after police spotted him inside a business close to the grocery store where a woman was shot to death in her car, Montgomery County police Chief J. Thomas Manger said.
Tordil, 62, is an employee of the Federal Protective Service, which protects federal facilities and is part of Homeland Security. He was placed on administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him, the FPS said.
Family identifies man shot at mall
The family of one of the victims, the man killed outside the Westfield Montgomery mall, identified him Saturday as Malcolm Winffel, 45.
Winffel’s mother, two brothers, a sister and other family members came to the site of the shooting Saturday morning and set up a makeshift memorial of flowers there to honor him.
His sister said Malcolm, who the family called Mike, “always helped people.”
“He always made people laugh, he was the clown,” she said.
Family members said Winffel, who would have turned 46 in June, did not know Tordil.
Estranged wife obtained protective order
In March 2016, a Prince George’s County district judge ordered that Tordil have no contact with his estranged wife, Gladys Tordil, and two minors thought to be their children.
According to the court documents, Tordil had access to at least three revolvers, which the court ordered him to carry only during work. He had to leave them at his workplace. The FPS said it went one step further after the protective order, removing Tordil’s duty weapon, badge and credentials.
Gladys Tordil alleged that Eulalio “has been subjecting them to intense military-like discipline — push ups, detention in dark closet,” according to the order. She said, “He threatened to harm me if I leave him,” the documents say.
Prince George’s County police charged Eulalio Tordil on Friday with first-degree murder in the shooting of his wife, the department said in a news release posted on its website. He was charged with assault for allegedly shooting a man who tried to intervene.
Montgomery County police have not announced any charges.
First shooting at high school
All the shootings happened in parking lots. Besides those killed, a total of three people were wounded. Police said they don’t know whether Tordil had a relationship with any of the others who were shot other than Gladys Tordil.
Law enforcement authorities had been looking for Tordil since Thursday, when Gladys Tordil, 44, was killed outside High Point High School in Beltsville in adjacent Prince George’s County, police said. The school was one of the places Tordil was ordered to stay away from in the court order.
It appeared Tordil followed her to the school property as she came to pick up her children and confronted her as she sat in her car, police said.
A passerby was shot as he tried to intervene and suffered non-life-threatening injuries, according to a police report. After the wife was shot multiple times, the gunman left the scene, police said.
Around 11 a.m. Friday morning, one man was fatally shot outside Westfield Montgomery mall in Bethesda, according to police. A man and woman were wounded, police said. The man is in critical condition and the woman in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries, police said.
While officers were investigating that shooting, they received a call at 11:50 a.m. about a shooting in the Giant supermarket parking lot in Aspen Hill, Manger said. Officers found a woman fatally shot inside her vehicle.
Officers searching for the suspect found his vehicle in a nearby shopping center parking lot, then spotted him inside businesses, he said.
Manger said police decided not to confront Tordil right away because they thought he was armed. The suspect spent about an hour in various businesses and ate lunch at a Boston Market, the chief said.
“He was walking from store to store and at no point was it safe for us to take him into custody until we did,” Manger said. “We needed to make sure the public was safe when we took him into custody.”
When the suspect got in his car, police blocked the vehicle and made the arrest, the official said.
Tordil is expected to appear in Rockville District Court on Monday at 1 p.m., police said.
Remembering the D.C. snipers
The area where Tordil was arrested had significance for residents of the District of Columbia.
The D.C.-area snipers, who killed 10 people in 2002, passed through the area, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said.
“They ate in the same restaurant where we were having the surveillance today, which was an irony that was not lost on me,” he said.
During three weeks in October 2002, John Allen Muhammad and accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo, then 17, killed 10 people and wounded three, while taunting police with written messages and phoned-in threats and demands.
Muhammed was executed in 2009. Malvo is serving a life sentence.
“Today’s incident was very reminiscent of fear that permeated throughout our communities during the 2002 sniper shootings,” Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III said in a statement on the county government website. “It was also another harsh reality of the terror that gun violence can create.”
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