MYSTERY

Cops Identify Navy Medic ‘Active Shooter’ Killed at Fort Detrick

Fantahun Girma Woldesenbet, 38, shot and critically wounded two sailors at a business park before driving onto the military base, police said.

An active shooter was shot and killed by personnel at Maryland’s Fort Detrick military base Tuesday morning, police said. The suspect was identified by authorities as 38-year-old U.S. Navy medic Fantahun Girma Woldesenbet, who shot and critically wounded two Navy sailors at a business associated with the military in the Riverside Tech Park.

He then fled to Fort Detrick, about a 10-minute drive from the scene. There, Woldesenbet was stopped by guards at the gate based on a BOLO, a “Be On the Lookout” alert issued by police after the shooting minutes earlier, said Brig. Gen. Michael Talley, commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command and Fort Detrick.

But before Woldesenbet could be searched by security, he sped away, making it about a half-mile onto the base before being stopped in a parking lot.

Talley said Woldesenbet got out of the car and “brandished a weapon” before police shot him. Emergency medical crews spent 20 minutes trying to revive Woldesenbet, who was then pronounced dead at the scene.

One of Woldesenbet’s shooting victims managed to stumble into Nicolock Paving Stones, a nearby business in Riverside Tech Park, the company’s director of marketing, Jeremy Mutschler, said in a statement.

“One of the victims, who was wounded, entered our facility looking for help and we were able to assist and call the authorities,” he said.

The two shooting victims, both males, were airlifted to a shock trauma center in Baltimore. The motive for the shooting is still unknown, according to authorities. No details about the shooter’s relationship with his victims, if any, have yet been released.

Woldesenbet identified as a medical lab technician in 2019 meeting minutes from the Board of Regents Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences 208th Meeting. A January 2021 dean’s list for the fall semester at Frederick Community College also included Fantahun Woldesenbet.

Frederick Police urged people to stay away from the area in a string of tweets Tuesday morning, writing: “We are on scene responding to an active shooter in the 8400 block of Progress Drive. Currently there are two victims and one suspect is down.”

Fort Detrick, around 50 miles northwest of Washington, D.C., is the home of U.S. biological defense program.