A Baltimore County jury began deliberations Wednesday afternoon in the case of David Linthicum, a Cockeysville man accused of fatally shooting two county officers in February 2023.
David Linthicum, who turned 26 last week, is accused of shooting a rifle at three police officers who were responding to his father’s 911 call. He said his son was suicidal and had a gun with him. The next day, he shot a detective on a nearby road.
Circuit Judge Garret P. Glennon dismissed the jurors at 5:30 p.m., after they had deliberated for about two hours. At one point, the jurors sent a note to court staff requesting “extra large gloves” to handle the evidence.
Prosecutors initially charged Linthicum with 27 counts, including multiple counts of attempted murder, assault, carjacking and related offenses. During the trial, prosecutors chose to drop or not pursue several charges, dropping all charges related to the alleged assault of Linthicum’s father, John.
After Linthicum fled the Powers Avenue home where he lived with his father on February 8, 2023, Baltimore County police and other agencies searched for him for nearly two days before he was arrested in Fallston in early February.
During what attorneys called a “manhunt,” Linthicum shot and wounded County Detective Jonathan Chih when Chih pulled his police car over to Warren Road for someone he mistook for a hitchhiker. Linthicum stole Chih’s car and drove off to Harford County.
During Assistant District Attorney Zarena Sita’s argument Wednesday, she instructed jurors not to be “distracted” by criticism of the defense’s response to police, including the damage SWAT teams did to the Powers Avenue home or the fact that an officer left his body camera behind while Linthicum was in the hospital and filmed him naked.
Sita also said that “suicide by police officer,” something the defense said Linthicum wanted to achieve, is still a crime.
Linthicum fired 16 shots at Baltimore County officers Barry Jordan, April Burton (then April Arnett) and David Allen in the basement, and a day later he fired 14 shots at Chih, Sita said.
Slowing down the bodycam footage during the trial so that it was shown frame by frame, Sita pointed to the moment Jordan’s bodycam captured Linthicum lying on his bed, pointing a gun at police. In another video, bullet holes suddenly appear in a wall as officers flee upstairs. She described Linthicum as “waiting” for police to arrive.
“He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want help,” Sita said. “He just wanted to shoot.”
To find Linthicum guilty of attempted first-degree murder, jurors must conclude that his attempt to kill the officers was premeditated.
Sita said Linthicum emptied his 30-round magazine in Chih the day after he shot at officers in the basement.
“The fact that the suspect was out of bullets may have saved Detective Chih’s life,” she said, pointing to a shotgun shell in a crime scene photo near a spot of Chih’s blood that Linthicum believed “was his fatal shot.”
“Two things could be true,” Sita said, “the suspect could be depressed and also want to hurt the police.”
During the six-day trial, public defenders Deborah Katz Levi and James Dills described Linthicum as mentally ill and suicidal, and said he shot out of desperation when he encountered police. The defense team examined several aspects of the police response, including the officers’ decision to enter the basement where they had heard Linthicum had a gun and the failure to fully brief officers like Chih on the search for Linthicum.
“If everyone involved had done what they were trained to do, we wouldn’t be here,” Levi said, adding that officers took “irrational risks” and ignored their training when they entered the basement to approach an armed and suicidal young man without backup.
She said there was no evidence that Linthicum knew he was shooting at police officers in the basement. She described him as a son in the middle of an emotional fight with his father.
Levi also unfavorably compared the three officers’ actions to those of Harford County Sheriff’s Sgt. Anthony DeMarino, who testified Tuesday, showing video footage of DeMarino having a calm conversation with Linthicum in the Fallston woods as helicopters flew overhead.
In the conversation, which was shouted from a distance, Linthicum and the sergeant discussed DeMarino’s previous job as a private chef for Baltimore Oriole Cal Ripken Jr. and cooking soup and ragu.
“This is not a conversation with someone who wants to kill police officers,” Levi said.
She also said that Linthicum believed Chih had come to kill him and that he had shot in self-defense.
She instructed jurors to send a “message” to prosecutors on behalf of people with mental health issues by acquitting Linthicum of all charges except the charge of motor vehicle theft for stealing Chih’s police car, for which she admitted there was no defense.
“You can tell the state that everyone was wrong that day,” she said.
In a rebuttal, Deputy District Attorney John Cox said Linthicum hated officers and called Levi’s criticism of the officers “outrageous.”
“We’re dealing with literal heroes,” he said. “They’re putting their lives on the line for you.”
The three county officers who were shot by Linthicum in their Powers Avenue home on Feb. 8 sat in the front row of the courtroom Wednesday, wearing their police vests.
