Police charge 45-year-old man in overnight shooting that killed 3 people, injured 3 others in Maryland

Six people were shot Sunday evening in an Annapolis neighborhood following an “interpersonal dispute,” killing three men and hospitalizing three other people, authorities said.

On Monday, authorities charged Charles Robert Smith, 45, in the killings, a single event that doubled the municipality’s homicide count and was the deadliest act of violence in Maryland’s capital city in several years. Smith lives on the same block as the shooting, police said.

Smith has been charged with three counts of second-degree murder, three counts of second-degree attempted murder, three counts of first-degree assault and use of a firearm in the commission of a violent crime. He is being held without bond, court records show.

FBI investigators were surveying the area Monday morning. Mixed with residential, media and local police vehicles, their trucks cluttered the bottom part of the Wilshire neighborhood’s W-shaped roadway.

Officers responded to a private residence on the 1000 block of Paddington Place at about 8 p.m. Sunday and found six wounded people. Three men, whose ages ranged from their 20s to early 50s, died at the scene. Authorities would not say whether the shooting took place inside or outdoors, but Jackson noted that the three men died outside.

Three other victims – two males and one female – were hospitalized for gunshot wounds and are in stable condition, Jackson said early Monday morning.

Jackson said the shooting was not random and that there was no threat to the public. He said the gunfire stemmed from an “interpersonal dispute,” but noted investigators have not determined the relationship between the people involved. He said police believe there might have been an exchange of gunfire at the home.

“Our community experienced a tragedy beyond words this evening,” Annapolis Sen. Sarah Elfreth posted on social media soon after the shooting. “Please keep the family and the first responders of the Annapolis Police Department (and) Annapolis Fire Department in your thoughts tonight.”

Jackson and Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley described the area of the shooting, between Edgewood Road and Kensington Way, as a “very stable” and “middle class” community.

“We don’t get very many calls of this nature in this area,” Jackson said, adding that “no area is immune” to widespread availability of handguns.

“We are saddened, saddened for the families, saddened for Annapolis,” Buckley said. “This sort of thing can happen anywhere, and nothing gets resolved from the use of a gun.”

Kenny Scaturro moved into the Wilshire neighborhood in December, a block away from where the shooting took place. An insurance salesman, Scaturro was watching TV with his brother, “maybe Jeopardy,” when he heard the gunshots. Initially, with so many “back-to-back” bangs, he thought it was construction and Dude, his 10-week-old yellow lab, cowered without barking.

However, while he was relieved there was a suspect in custody – he told The Capital he witnessed law enforcement take a man away – Scaturro added he isn’t scared in his new home.

“It’s not the area,” Scaturro said. He walks his puppy regularly and feels comfortable in what he described as a very diverse neighborhood. “I feel like it was just that person. It’s weird, but I’m not that concerned in the long run.”

Jackson did not identify a motive for the shooting, noting “it’s still very early on” in the investigation. He acknowledged that police have received information about a graduation party taking place in the area of the shooting.

“We’re still trying to determine that. I don’t want to say officially what this was about yet,” he said.

Before the shooting, Annapolis Police had handled three homicides so far this year. Sunday’s violence doubled that number. Anne Arundel County Police have investigated nine homicides this year.

Reached before the news conference Sunday evening, Jackson described the number of fatalities from Sunday’s shooting as “unusual” for Maryland’s capital, recalling the most recent mass shooting in Annapolis: the 2018 attack at the Capital Gazette’s newsroom, where a gunman with a long-standing grudge against the newspaper fatally shot Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters. Sunday’s shooting came just over two weeks before the fifth anniversary of the attack on June 28.