A specialized Baltimore County Police unit tasked with arresting violent offenders is at the center of two federal lawsuits alleging the agency used excessive force in”] during a pair of police shootings.
Filed Thursday, one of the lawsuits accuses members of the Baltimore County Police Department’s Criminal Apprehension Support Team, or CAST, of wrongful death in the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Brian Roger McCourry Jr., who died more than a month after a detective shot him in the parking lot of a Royal Farms in White Marsh on Jan. 31, 2023.
The other complaint, brought in August 2023, charges members of the CAST unit with battery, negligence and excessive force in the shooting of 19-year-old Shane Radomski, who the lawsuit says was left permanently disabled from his injuries, outside of an auto shop in Dundalk on April 14, 2022.
Both lawsuits described the shootings as unnecessary and said the involved officers endangered members of the public when their own lives weren’t at risk. None of the plainclothes officers involved in either shooting were wearing body-worn cameras, nor were their unmarked police vehicles equipped with dashboard cameras.
Nicholas Bonadio, an attorney representing the plaintiffs in both lawsuits, described the shootings as “strikingly similar” in an emailed statement.
“Because there was no body camera or dash camera footage, we only know what happened because of the coincidental placement of cameras on nearby buildings,” Bonadio said. “Law enforcement have a difficult job, of course, but deadly force should be the last resort. In both of these cases, an officer resorted to deadly force to prevent an escape, not to protect themselves or the public.”
A police department spokeswoman said members of the CAST unit began wearing body-worn cameras on March 8, 2023, but otherwise declined to comment on the lawsuits.
David Rose, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 4, which represents county officers, said he was unaware of the lawsuits and declined to comment.
Around 6 a.m. on Jan. 31, 2023, detectives with the CAST unit were surveilling McCourry, who police wanted in connection to two nonfatal shootings, at the Royal Farms in the 10700 block of Pulaski Highway, according to a report from the Maryland Office of the Attorney General’s Independent Investigations Division, which investigates deaths involving police.
Detectives tried to pin McCourry’s KIA SUV near a gas pump with their own vehicles, but McCourry maneuvered around them, striking one officer’s vehicle, the report says. Around that time, Detective Jonathan Trenary got out of his car and shot McCourry in the neck. His car continued driving, striking another vehicle. McCourry died at the hospital March 3, 2023.
The lawsuit filed on behalf of McCourry’s family said Baltimore County Police policy only allows officers to fire at a moving vehicle if that vehicle is “being used against the officer” and the “safety of innocent persons would not be jeopardized.”
“At the time Detective Trenary fired his weapon, the vehicle was not being used against him or any other officer, and firing at the vehicle caused significant danger to innocent persons. All the CAST Officers were easily able to maintain a position of safety while Mr. McCourry attempted to escape the scene,” McCourry’s family’s attorneys wrote.
“Even if Detective Trenary perceived danger from the initial collision with Detective Depew’s car,” they continued, “or when Mr. McCourry briefly drifted in reverse, he did not fire the deadly shot until it was clear that Mr. McCourry was driving away from the CAST Officers, not using his car ‘against’ them.”
The lawsuit accuses Trenary of battery, excessive force and gross negligence. The complaint also targets the police department with multiple counts of excessive force, alleging the department failed to train its officers on when to resort to deadly force.
Prosecutors with the attorney general’s office, which, at the time they were investigating McCourry’s shooting, did not have the power to prosecute police, noted in their June 2023 report that none of the officers were in the path of McCourry’s fleeing car when Trenary opened fire.
Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger nonetheless decided in July 2023 that his office would not pursue criminal charges against Trenary.
In the second shooting, CAST unit officers swarmed the parking lot of an auto body shop on Avon Road in Dundalk around 12:40 p.m. April 14, 2022. Police previously said they were trying to arrest someone in connection to a 2021 homicide.
Radomski’s car was in the parking lot along with the person police wanted in connection to the homicide, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of Radomski. When the alleged suspect got out of his car, “at least four unmarked non-descript vehicles rushed in, with at least one using a siren, but none using lights. All the non-descript vehicles had darkly tinted windows.”
“As the officers, wearing only plain clothes with tactical vests (and not uniforms) jumped out, guns drawn, shouting … Radomski apparently panicked, and tried to drive away,” his attorneys wrote.
It was at that time that another unmarked police vehicle, an SUV, drove into an oncoming lane and crashed into Radomski’s car, according to the lawsuit. Radomski reversed his car.
“Mr. Radomski then shifted into forward drive and moved slowly toward an open area of egress, yet the Defendant Officer, despite not being in any imminent danger, fired a ‘kill shot’ through the windshield,” Radomski’s attorneys wrote, adding that the officer from the unmarked SUV chased Radomski’s car and fired “round after round into the vehicle’s cabin.”
“As this happened,” the lawsuit continued, “the other Defendant Officers joined the shooting spree, firing dozens of bullets at Mr. Radomski’s car until it drifted to a stop. The Defendant Officers knew that the person in the Nissan was not the target of their warrant, but they took no steps to identify the driver, or potentially the passengers, before opening fire.”
The lawsuit said Radomski “has been permanently disabled, both physically and mentally.” Baltimore County prosecutors, meanwhile, dropped charges against the man police were pursuing that day in the 2021 homicide after discovering exculpatory evidence.
Trenary was one of four officers named in Radomski’s lawsuit, which alleges battery, excessive force, negligence and gross negligence.
Shellenberger’s office presented evidence of Radomski’s shooting to a grand jury in Baltimore County, who found the officers were justified.