Community shaken after deadly police-involved shooting in Hyattsville

HYATTSVILLE, Md. (FOX 5 DC) - After police shot a man in Hyattsville Thursday, it was a tense and emotional meeting Tuesday as the police chief took questions from dozens of citizens.

Overwhelmingly, people who spoke up at the gathering at University Christian Church said police should not have killed the suspect and that it was excessive that 10 officers opened fire.

Hyattsville Police Chief Amal Awad provided a detailed timeline of what happened Thursday morning. 

Awad said police got a call about the suspect, 49-year-old Leonard Shand, from employees of a coffee shop near The Mall at Prince George’s. They said he had returned after hitting an employee in the head with a metal pole three days before.

Officers responded and saw Shand had two knives. Awad said they tried to get him to surrender, tasing him three times, pepper-spraying him, and eventually shooting him with nonlethal beanbags.

At that point, she said he advanced toward officers, and then 10 officers opened fire.

She said she doesn’t believe anything could’ve been done differently.

“In my observation, from what I saw and from hearing from my officers directly, no,” Awad said.

Some at the meeting were unconvinced of that even after hearing specifics of the incident. 

There were also concerns about a stray bullet that blasted through an office window, right by a woman working there.

”That’s another issue when you have 10 people shooting at one, it could’ve hit anybody,” said Ernest Gooding, who attended the meeting.

“There were 10+ officers and I feel like they was some other way of stopping him,” said Meredith Massey, another attendee. “It’s a really tragic situation and I feel really sad it happened in our community. I hope that there will be different training and different methods deployed in the future, but I do appreciate they called the meeting.”

It’s a rarity to see a meeting like this where a police chief meets directly with citizens and answers questions about an officer-involved shooting, especially so soon afterwards.

Even those angry about the shooting gave a round of applause for the chief, city council and city staff who organized the meeting.