Heather Curtis
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON (WMAL) – Ten police officers from multiple departments shot and killed an armed man in Hyattsville Thursday morning after non-lethal attempts to stop him didn’t work according to police.
It started around 7:15 Thursday morning when employees at a coffee shop near Toledo and Belcrest roads called to report an armed man. Employees at the same shop called police days ago after the same man hit an employee with a metal pole in the head days ago, causing that person to bleed profusely, according to Hyattsville Police Chief Amal Awad.
Awad said the officers caught up with 49-year-old Leonard Shand around 7:18 Thursday morning at the intersection of East West Highway and Belcrest Drive. They talked with him and asked him to drop two knives he was holding. They followed Shand for about a quarter of a mile negotiating with him and trying to keep him away from people, including kids waiting for a school bus.
At some point three different officers tased Shand, but he wasn’t phased according to Awad. They kept following Shand, and another officer pepper sprayed him. A supervisor armed with a non-lethal shotgun that shoots beanbags shot at him.
“At some point the suspect is heard saying that he embraces death and that ‘I’m going to get you.’ And he’s specifically speaking to the supervisor who is holding the shotgun,” Awad said.
Another officer set off a flashbang to distract and disorient Shand so he could be arrested safely. When that happened the supervisor shot the beanbag gun, but none of that worked either.
Shand charged at the officer with both knives according to Awad.
Preliminarily, Awad believes a total of six City of Hyattsville Police officers, three Prince George’s County Police officers and one from the Mount Rainier Police Department shot at the man. He died.
“None of those eight less lethal options took any effect: conducted energy, OC spray or beanbag rounds over the course of this half hour, and that precipitated the unfortunate events that we’re talking about where someone lost their lives, but these officers exercised due diligence. They had a tactical plan,” Prince George’s County Police Chief Hank Stawinski said.
Stawinski added they do not know how many officers used lethal force. He said there will have to be an autopsy to figure out based on ballistics how many rounds were fired.
A Prince George’s County Police spokesperson said they don’t know if any of the officers are on leave. The investigation continues.
The incident was caught on tape both from body cameras officers were wearing and dash board cameras in police cruisers according to Stawinski.
Copyright 2019 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (Photo: Prince George’s County Police)
