Three more teenage boys have been charged with murder in the death of a Baltimore County police officer killed Monday after she was run over by a Jeep Wrangler that police say was driven by a teenager alleged to have been involved in a set of burglaries.
At a bail review hearing Wednesday afternoon, a Baltimore County judge said Matthews and Ward posed a risk of harm and ordered they remain held without bail in adult facilities, according to the Baltimore Sun.
Prosecutors said Matthews had multiple prior offenses and at the time of the encounter with Caprio was supposed to be on house arrest while on probation for a car theft, the Sun reported.
Genius’s hearing was postponed until Thursday so his private attorney could be present.
On Tuesday, Dawnta A. Harris, 16, also of Baltimore City, was charged as an adult with first-degree murder. Police say he was the driver of the Jeep.
According to law enforcement officials, a neighbor called 911 to report a suspicious Jeep on Linwen Way in the Perry Hall area and said that three people had gotten out of the Jeep and broken into a home.
Police said Caprio arrived at the scene and pursued the Jeep down a cul-de-sac. She got out of her patrol car and, with her gun drawn, ordered Harris out of the vehicle, court documents state. He partially opened his door, then shut it and accelerated toward her, striking her and causing her to be knocked backward about 25 feet, charging documents state. She died soon after.
Harris abandoned the Jeep but was located nearby by other officers, court filings state. The Jeep was stolen, police later said, and was found with a bullet hole in the windshield from a shot Caprio fired before being run down.
Caprio had been on the force nearly four years and was described as “smart, energetic and athletic.”
On Tuesday, a Baltimore County judge ordered Harris held without bond in the adult jail and said the teen was a “one-man crime wave.”
J. Wyndal Gordon, who identified himself as Harris’s attorney, said in a Facebook message that the teen is still a child.
“He’s far from perfect, and so are we,” Gordon said in a Facebook post.
“If many of us would have grown up in the same conditions as he, and under the same circumstances perhaps some of the ‘choices’ we would’ve made may not have been the most advantageous to our social welfare either,” the attorney wrote.
During a police interview after his arrest, police said, Harris said Genius was one of three people who got out of the Jeep to burglarize a home while Harris waited in the vehicle. Genius later told police at headquarters that he “objected to being charged with murder,” saying he was in the house when Caprio was killed, according to charging documents.
Authorities said Matthews and Ward admitted in interviews with police after their arrests that they were involved in a burglary in the area.
The same group of teens was also possibly involved in another burglary in which a gun was stolen, police have said. The weapon has not been found.
Peter Hermann and Lynh Bui contributed to this report.
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