BALTIMORE — There was more chaos, confusion and anger Monday afternoon on the streets of Baltimore, spurred by a shooting incident at the scene of last week’s unrest over Freddie Gray’s death.
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Baltimore Police Lt. Col. Melvin Russell told reporters that the situation unraveled after surveillance footage captured a black man on Pennsylvania and North Avenues with a handgun. The man fled from police, Russell said, when he accidentally lost control of the gun and it discharged.
Police never fired at the man, and he sustained “no injuries whatsoever,” Russell said. Medics came to the scene, and though the man at first resisted medical attention, he was eventually taken to Maryland General hospital. The man was arrested on a gun charge and brought to the hospital “out of an abundance of caution,” Baltimore police Sgt. Jarron Jackson said, according to the Baltimore Sun.
James Carter, who was working at a Metro PCS store just steps from the scene, said he heard a gunshot ring out in the street. Carter stood frozen in the shop, waiting for a second gunshot that never came.
“I thought, oh Lord, not again,” Carter told msnbc.
Carter then ran out of the shop, cell phone in hand, and began filming the aftermath. There, he recorded a Baltimore police officer standing above a revolver on the sidewalk. The street was in chaos as bystanders and police officers rushed to where a man was lying on the street handcuffed, Carter said.
“He looked like he was shot,” Carter said of the man handcuffed on the ground. “He was not dead. I watched him go in the ambulance. He was hollering.”
Another witness at the scene told Carter he heard police warn the man with the gun to “freeze” three times. Then the gunshot rang out.
As police cleared the scene, officers were recorded on tape spraying chemical agents on the bystanders to disperse the crowd. The nozzle of the spray was just inches away from one man’s face when the orange spray sailed into his eyes. The crowd was irate.








