Armed Robber Picked The Wrong Baltimore Barbershop To Rob

BALTIMORE — An off-duty police officer getting a haircut Saturday afternoon shot and killed a man who police say burst into the East Baltimore shop and shot a barber to death. Police believe the same man was responsible for two earlier shootings that left one person dead and one critically injured.

Police were trying to determine a motive linking the three shootings. The third and final shooting occurred at The Bladi Style barbershop in the 5700 block of O’Donnell Street in Baltimore’s Medford neighborhood, where police set up a mobile command center and officers cordoned off the area near the small brick shop with a barber pole in the front

After the suspect allegedly committed the other two shootings Saturday, he “entered the barber shop, produced a handgun, fired it at one of the barbers who was working in the barber shop, striking that barber,” Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said at the scene.

The off-duty Baltimore police sergeant was getting a haircut from another barber at about 3:16 p.m., Harrison said. The officer, who was armed while off duty and in plain clothes, responded quickly “and with great bravery produced his firearm” and fatally shot the man, Harrison said.

Harrison said detectives linked the shooting to the two earlier ones, but he declined to elaborate on the possible connection between them.

“We’re processing three different scenes in three parts of the city,” the commissioner said. “While this perpetrator has expired from his injuries, we will still need answers to these questions.”

One victim was is in critical condition from a shooting that occurred around 2 p.m. in the 5000 block of East Oliver Street, about two miles away from the barber shop in the Armistead Gardens neighborhood, police said. Police believe that shooting followed an argument.

Another victim died from a shooting in the 4600 block of Eastern Ave., near Greektown.

“We are working to determine the connectivity, which is a likely connectivity,” Harrison said during a briefing near the barber shop.

The police officer, who was not identified, was not injured, Harrison said..