[Baltimore Sun] David Linthicum’s father and injured county officer testify in attempted murder trial
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When John “Whit” Linthicum dialed 911 on Feb. 8, 2023, he was hoping police could help his son, David, who had a gun and wanted to die.
The first witness at the 26-year-old’s trial on charges stemming from the shooting of two county police officers, his father testified that he called police in order to “get some help, ease the situation.”
“Not to escalate it, not make things worse,” he told jurors Tuesday in Baltimore County Circuit Court.
But things did get worse. As his father and three officers entered David Linthicum’s basement bedroom, he fired through a wall, striking Officer Barry Jordan with either bits of shrapnel or bullet fragments, then escaped through a sliding glass door. He spent two days on the run from police, during which prosecutors said he also shot Detective Jonathan Chih and stole his Dodge Ram pickup truck.
Police finally surrounded him and captured him miles away in Fallston early in the morning of Feb. 10. He faces charges of five counts of attempted first-degree murder, seven counts of assault, and carjacking and firearms offenses.
The legal case has been contentious ahead of trial, with attorneys for both sides attempting to remove one another from the case, citing conflicts of interest or prosecutorial misconduct.
While no one disputes that David Linthicum fired his gun toward police officers in February 2023, the two sides offered different takes on put forward different versions of Linthicum’s intentions and the police department’s competence in opening statements Tuesday.
Prosecutors played a video showing the second major event of the case, when narcotics detective Jonathan Chih spotted Linthicum on the side of Warren Road on Feb. 9 and pulled over, believing Linthicum was a hitch-hiker.
After he stopped the car, a voice could be heard asking, “You here to kill me?” Chih replied, “No, why?” before a barrage of gunfire erupted.
With the sound of each gunshot, the sign language interpreter present in the courtroom to interpret proceedings for David Linthicum’s mother made the motion of a gun moving forward with her hand. Each time Chih yelled out in pain, she moved a clawed hand away from her open mouth.
Cox said Linthicum first fired 12 shots at his father’s home on Powers Avenue, four more as officers fled up the stairwell, then 14 shots at Chih, emptying the 30-round magazine on his assault-style rifle.
“He used every single bullet available to him to try to take the life of Detective Chih,” Cox said.
Cox said Chih and the other Baltimore County officers involved in the case were just trying to do their jobs and help Linthicum.
Linthicum’s attorney Deborah Katz Levi argued that police mishandled the response to a person in a mental health crisis, faulting officers for allowing Linthicum’s father to walk into a dangerous situation, letting Linthicum escape the home, and failing to call on the mobile crisis unit or crisis negotiators to de-escalate until after Linthicum had fled to Harford County.
“Everybody should be accountable for what happened that day,” she said.
Levi, the director of special litigation for the Office of the Public Defender, described Linthicum as a “sad person,” who suffered from speech delays and a learning disability at a young age and was traumatized by his parents’ contentious divorce.
“David Linthicum by no stretch is a violent person, is a killer, is a callous person,” she said.
Body-worn camera footage played multiple times in court Tuesday showed John Linthicum leading three officers down a set of stairs into his son’s bedroom in their Cockeysville home after using a screwdriver to pick a lock on the basement door. He told officers he should go first because, “if someone gets shot, it should be me.”
Jordan, the officer who said he still has bullet fragments in his body today, testified that although the county’s mobile crisis unit might be put on notice of a situation involving a suicidal subject, it falls to patrol officers to ensure a scene is safe and gather more information before calling the team that includes mental health clinicians.
“We need to ask for them,” Jordan said of the teams. “They’re in high demand these days.”
When John Linthicum led the officers into his son’s bedroom, David was lying on the bed with a rifle beside him, he said. From the hallway, Jordan quietly said an expletive, then, “he’s got a gun,” to an officer, according to body-camera footage.
Linthicum’s father faced his son with his arms open and said, “What, are you going to shoot me now?” just before shots rang out, according to the video. Jordan and two other officers turned around to run back up the stairs and out of the house.
Jordan testified Tuesday that he watched the wall “disintegrating” as bullets pierced it and turned quickly to leave.
“There was no time to do anything else,” he said.
John Linthicum can be heard saying “David, you stupid —” before another volley of gunfire. As the police officers ran up the stairs, yelling “shots fired” into their radios,” there’s a crashing sound, which John Linthicum testified was the sound of him hurling a ceramic bowl at his son, a final attempt to stop him from leaving the house.
John Linthicum told police in an initial interview that his son fired at police, but he said Tuesday that he didn’t know where he was aiming. Although one of the counts of attempted murder refers to the shots allegedly fired at him, he said he didn’t believe his son tried to kill him.
The footage also showed Jordan taking cover outside behind a police vehicle and communicating via radio for a few minutes before John Linthicum walked outside the house, apparently unharmed.
“How is that possible? What was he shooting at?” Jordan asked him in surprise.
John Linthicum pointed to his left, where the officers had been standing behind him in the hallway.
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