Cecil County - An employee at a Maryland countertop business opened fire on five co-workers Wednesday morning, killing three of them, and then drove to Delaware and shot a former colleague at a car dealership, authorities said.
Police departments along Interstate 95 from Maryland to New Jersey conducted a widespread manhunt for the gunman, identified by the authorities as Radee Labeeb Prince, 37, who escaped officers during a brief chase after the second shooting, in Wilmington, Delaware.
About 10 hours after the first shooting, authorities in Cecil County, Maryland, announced in a Facebook post around 7:30 p.m. that Prince had been captured. Other details were not immediately available.
Police said they did not know what had prompted the attacks but that Prince, a felon with an extensive criminal record and a history of workplace violence, targeted the people in Maryland and had “beefs” with the victim in Delaware.
The first shooting occurred about an hour after Advanced Granite Solutions opened for business in Edgewood, Maryland, about 20 miles northeast of Baltimore. Shortly before 9 a.m., Prince pulled out a handgun, police said, and fired at five colleagues, killing three of them and critically wounding two others.
The employees who survived were taken to a hospital and were in critical condition, said Jeffrey R. Gahler, the sheriff in Harford County, Maryland. The victims’ names have not been released. The owner of Advanced Granite Solutions, Burak Caba, said in a brief phone interview Wednesday night that he was shaken and did not want to discuss what had happened.
Caba told The Associated Press that Prince worked as a machine operator at the business, which designs and installs granite and marble countertops. Prince was fired from another Maryland granite business this year after he had been accused of punching a co-worker in the face, according to Maryland court records.
The first 911 call came into dispatchers at the Harford County Sheriff’s Office at 8:58 a.m., the sheriff said, and officers responded to the scene within four minutes. But by then Prince had left, apparently on his way in a GMC Acadia SUV to Delaware to confront a former colleague, the authorities said.
“There’s an individual out there on the loose who committed one of the most heinous acts we’ve ever seen in our county,” Gahler said at a news conference Wednesday morning.
About 10:45 a.m., Prince pulled into the 28th Street Auto Sales, a used car dealership in an industrial section of Wilmington, Delaware. He shot a man twice, including once in the head, police said. He was being treated at a hospital, authorities said.
The man was conscious when officers arrived and identified the gunman as Prince, Robert Tracy, the Wilmington Police Department chief, said at a news conference. Tracy said officers spotted a GMC Acadia leaving the dealership and chased after it, but the driver got away.
Tracy declined to identify the victim, but said that Prince and the victim knew each other, that they had a “beef” and that their “relationship had gone awry.”
David McCall, a cook at the Printz Market, a convenience store next to 28th Street Auto Sales, said he recognized a photo of Prince on the news as a former employee at the dealership. McCall said that he often got upset at his store and yelled at employees.
“He had a nasty attitude,” McCall said in an interview. “He would throw his money down.”