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NikiH wrote:And Jake be careful, who would have ever thought something like that would happen in Edgewater.

Office gunman kills one, then self
By SCOTT DAUGHERTY and ERIC HARTLEY, Staff Writers


By Paul W. Gillespie -- The Capital
A silver truck containing the body of the shooter sits in a drug store parking lot


A man armed with a rifle walked into an Edgewater mortgage company yesterday afternoon and shot two people, one fatally, then drove his truck to a nearby drugstore and killed himself.

Kenneth Brian Kertesz, 43, of Waldorf was pronounced dead at Prince George's Trauma Center a few hours after being shot in the chest at his workplace, Universal Mortgage and Finance. An "associate" who had stopped by to visit, William Augustus Snow, 44, of Chesapeake Beach, was treated at Anne Arundel Medical Center for a minor gunshot wound to his shoulder, county police said.

The gunman, Michael Wayne Baxter Jr., 30, of Bowie, was pronounced dead in his silver Dodge truck after turning the rifle on himself.

Sgt. Shawn Urbas, a county police spokesman, said late last night that the shooting was domestic in nature, but would not elaborate. Several people who worked in the two-story building at 3158 Braverton St. in South River Colony said no one recognized the shooter, and Mr. Snow told people helping him he didn't know the man, either.

"You could smell the rifle being shot," said Jeff Donohue Jr., 24, an employee of Universal Mortgage and Finance who was 10 feet away in an office when his boss, Mr. Kertesz, was shot.

"There's wasn't much you could do except hope he doesn't come after you," Mr. Donohue said.

One man who works in the building, who wouldn't give his name, said a construction worker ducked into his office after gunshots rang out in the hallway just before 3:30 p.m.

"Call the cops and get out! Somebody's shooting!" the worker shouted, staying low to the floor.

A woman who worked at Universal, who wouldn't give her name, said she heard what sounded like a rifle being cocked. As she got up, she heard gunshots from the hallway. There were two blasts, then a third a while later.

"I just ran back and told the guys there was gunshots," she said. "We went into a back office and locked the door and waited for the police."

Four people waited there until they could hear the police and knew it was safe to come out.

Georgia Stitcher was downstairs working at her family's accounting firm when she heard the shots. Moments later, a woman who works for Global Title Group, also in the building, ran in and told Mrs. Stitcher, "Call 911."

Mrs. Stitcher said the woman told her she'd passed a man openly carrying a gun on his way upstairs.

Mrs. Stitcher called 911, staying on the phone even after the first officers from the nearby Southern District arrived within seconds. She also shouted to her co-workers to lock all the doors in the office.

Some workers went to the window and saw a man driving away in a silver pickup truck, and Mrs. Stitcher relayed the description to police.

Two minutes after her 911 call, an off-duty officer who heard it go out found the truck in front of a Rite Aid in the Southgate Shopping Center, about two blocks away. Mr. Baxter was dead in the driver's seat and a rifle was found inside.

Meanwhile, police were trying to keep the workers in the building safe, not entirely sure the shooter wasn't still around.

"Everybody was running around and the police were trying to get everybody back in the building," Mrs. Stitcher said.

She said her company has been in South River Colony since last year and described it as quiet.

"It hasn't sunk in yet," she said, standing with her co-workers under the overhang of a nearby building to stay out of the late-afternoon drizzle. "I'm still in the 'It can't happen here' stage."

air_hog wrote:Dude that's pretty wild.

Something like that happened when I was in 7th grade after Halloween Night, we rode our bikes to school and there were like 4 cop cars and all these News Crews out front.

Apparantly some kid OD'd and passed out/died in the bike racks. His friends all said he had a heart condition, but everyone else knew he was a pot head.

The school day was a field trip, and my friends dad was even on TV with an interview.