A federal law enforcement officer who had recently been placed on administrative leave is in custody after a trio of shootings paralyzed the Washington, D.C., suburbs.
The shootings happened over two days, starting with a homicide in a high school parking lot Thursday, and ending with gunfire at two Maryland shopping centers eight miles apart Friday that killed two people and injured two others.
Police arrested federal officer Eulalio Tordil, 62, who they suspect in all three shootings, Friday afternoon. Tordil had been on the run after he allegedly gunned down his estranged wife in her car Thursday in a high school parking lot in Beltsville, Maryland, while she was picking up her daughters.
Friday’s violence started around 11:30 a.m. at the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, where two men and one woman were injured by gunshots in the parking lot, Montgomery County police said.
One man later died at the hospital, police said. Another man was in grave condition. The female had non-life-threatening injuries.
About 20 minutes after that shooting, police responded to more gunfire at a Giant Food supermarket at the Aspen Hill Shopping Center in Silver Spring, where a woman was fatally struck, said Montgomery County Police Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain.
Tordil, of Adelphi, Maryland, was spotted by police Friday afternoon at a Dunkin’ Donuts across from the Giant Food after authorities found a vehicle that matched the description of his car. Police kept him under surveillance and when he walked back to his car and arrested him without incident.
All told, Tordil is suspected of killing three people and injuring three others in a shooting spree that spanned two Maryland counties. In addition to the mall survivors, a bystander was shot in the shoulder and suffered a non-life-threatening injury when Gladys Tordil, Tordil’s estranged wife, was killed.
Prince George’s County and Montgomery County police had been hunting for Tordil since her shooting.
“It’s tragic that we were not able to intervene without additional victims victims being harmed,” Prince George’s County Police Chief Henry Stawinski said, adding that he was grateful for the coordination between officials to finally nab him.
Tordil is a law enforcement officer with the Federal Protective Service, a Homeland Security agency responsible for security at federal buildings and some foreign embassies in the Washington area.
He was put on administrative duties in March after a protective order was issued against him, Homeland Security officials told NBC News. He was later placed on administrative leave and required to surrender his government-issued weapons, badge, and credentials. Any weapons he may have used were therefore obtained on his own, federal officials said. Officials say his job was supervising contract employees who handle security at federal facility entrances. The first shooting Friday happened after a “confrontation” in the parking lot, the assistant police chief said. “One individual was shot. Two other individuals came to that person’s aid” and were also shot, McSwain told reporters. Police do not believe the victims and the shooter knew each other, “but we are certainly looking at all angles,” McSwain said. Tordil will appear in court Monday at 1 p.m. This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com.
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