Maryland gunman in custody; police consider link with previous murder
Police in Maryland are looking into whether a Federal Protective Service employee wanted in the death of his wife on Thursday is responsible for Friday’s shootings in the parking lots of a nearby mall and grocery store.
The Prince George's County Police Department and the Montgomery County Police Department both confirmed that they are investigating a possible link between the shooting at High Point High School in Prince George's County and the two shootings Friday in Montgomery County.
Authorities identified the suspect as 62-year-old Eulalio Tordil and announced around 3 p.m. that he had been taken into custody.
Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said officers found a silver vehicle outside a Dunkin’ Donuts that matched the description of one linked to Thursday’s homicide.
“They had this individual under surveillance, and when the individual walked back to his car, the plain-clothes officers were able to take him into custody without incident,” Manger said at a 4 p.m. press conference.
Prince George's County police chief Hank Stawinski said at the press conference that his investigators had been working diligently since Thursday night. His department provided the vehicle description that helped locate Tordil.
“It’s tragic that we were not able to intervene prior to additional victims being harmed,” he said, “but I am pleased with the fact that this individual has been apprehended, and now we can restore a degree of peace.”
According to Montgomery County state attorney John McCarthy, formal charges are expected in the next few hours and his arraignment will likely be on Monday.
"The events today unfolded very, very rapidly. He is in police headquarters here in Montgomery County," McCarthy said.
Slideshow: Shootings in Maryland
Police said two men and one woman were shot before 11 a.m. Friday at the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Md. Montgomery County police said one was killed and the other is in critical condition. The woman suffered injuries that were thought to be not life-threatening.
About half an hour after the mall shooting, a woman was killed at the Aspen Hill Shopping Center in Silver Spring, Md., according to police.
As a precaution, more than a dozen Bethesda area schools and some government building had been put on lockdown temporarily, officials said.
Police said they don’t yet know if Friday’s shootings are connected to a Thursday incident where a man fatally shot his estranged wife outside a Baltimore area high school.
In that earlier incident, police said Tordil confronted and shot Gladys Tordil, 44, inside her SUV in the parking lot of High Point High School in Beltsville, 15 miles northeast of Friday’s shooting in the mall parking lot.
According to multiple media reports, Tordil was recently ordered by a Maryland court to stay away from his wife as part of a custody case.
A Prince George’s public school website lists Gladys Tordil as an employee at Parkdale High School.
Tordil is employed as a law enforcement officer with the FPS, a U.S. agency that protects government facilities.
According to WTOP-TV, the federal police agency put Eulalio Tordil on administrative duty and confiscated his badge and gun following the court’s March 3 order. Tordil turned over six more weapons in mid-March, authorities told the television station.
For some in the area, the shootings brought back memories of the infamous DC snipers. While conducting surveillance, authorities saw Tordil eat at the same Boston Market where one of the infamous D.C. snipers ate after one of his attacks, according to McCarthy. He said that connection was no more than a coincidence.
In October 2002, John John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo killed 10 people and wounded three others during a spate of coordinated shootings known as the Beltway Sniper Attacks. The pair was captured at a rest area in Montgomery County, Md.
