Sean Suiter, a Baltimore Police Department detective who was killed in the line of duty, lost his life a day before he was set to testify against fellow BPD officers. Police officials are saying that Suiter’s death was not connected to the federal indictment of eight other officers, although the speculation seemed understandable.
The Baltimore Sun reports:
Slain Baltimore homicide Detective Sean Suiter was scheduled to testify before a federal grand jury in the case against a squad of indicted officers on the day after he was shot, Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said Wednesday evening.
The revelation brings together two cases that have sent shock waves through the Police Department and the city as a whole: the federal prosecutions of eight members of the department’s elite gun task force, who are accused of shaking down citizens and conspiring with drug dealers, and the killing of Suiter last week in West Baltimore, the first of an on-duty officer by a suspect in 10 years.
Davis said Wednesday that federal authorities have told him “in no uncertain terms” that Suiter was not a target of their investigation into the Gun Trace Task Force. He said authorities have no reason to believe Suiter’s killing was connected to his pending testimony.
“The BPD and FBI do not possess any information that this incident … is part of any conspiracy,” Davis said. He said evidence shows the shooting occurred spontaneously, as Suiter investigated a suspicious person in the Harlem Park neighborhood.
Suiter, a married father of five, was 43 years of age.
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Photo: Baltimore Police
