The Cogir Potomac Senior Living facility in Maryland, US, where Robert Fuller, 87, was shot dead. Photo / Google Maps
An 87-year-old resident of a Maryland assisted-living facility in the United States was shot and killed by a man authorities say was a 22-year-old staff member.
The suspect later fired two shots at a state trooper during a traffic stop, according to records filed in Montgomery County District Court.
The incidents - 10 days apart and in different areas of the state - led to the arrest yesterday of a staff member at the facility who is being held in Montgomery’s detention centre.
Maurquise Emillo James was charged with first-degree murder in the February 14 death of Robert Fuller, a retired lawyer who had written a mystery novel and was shot in the head at the Cogir facility in Potomac, according to court filings.
James has also been charged with attempted first-degree murder in the traffic stop incident yesterday, according to state officials.
That trooper wasn’t hit by a bullet, officials said but was so close to the gun blasts that he suffered powder burn injuries to his face.
“By sheer circumstance and the quick actions taken by our trooper, he narrowly escaped a tragedy,” said Michael Jackson, superintendent of the Maryland State Police.
James was arrested later yesterday.
A motive for either incident remains unclear.
James, who was pulled over in Baltimore, worked as a medication technician who delivered daily medications to residents at the senior living facility. Police had released a video of a suspect on Saturday who they now say they believe is James.
Court records do not indicate if James has retained a lawyer. A woman who answered a phone number linked to James’s family in Baltimore declined to comment today.
A spokesperson at Cogir’s corporate headquarters had earlier declined to discuss the incident, other than saying the company and staff were co-operating with investigators and that “the safety, security and wellbeing of our residents” was the chain’s highest priority.
The February 14 shooting of Fuller, at around 5am local time, had touched off a seven-day mystery that began to focus on James over the weekend, according to a police affidavit describing the case filed in Montgomery County District Court.
Having already combed through weeks of surveillance videos taken inside the facility, investigators watched two more - one from January 9 and one from January 26.
The January 9 video appeared to show James in the area of an exterior door that at the time had been tampered with, according to court records.
The January 26 video showed James walking outside the facility in the snow at 1.40am, more than two hours after his shift had ended, according to the affidavit.
On Monday, a tipster came to the Montgomery County Police Headquarters with information about the case, saying that employees at the facility thought a co-worker might have been involved in Fuller’s death, according to court filings.
Although the tipster didn’t know the worker’s name, the person told investigators that the suspected employee shared the same last name as another employee.
Co-workers on Tuesday found James coming out of an empty activity room at 12.50am, according to court records, which describe James as going to his car and driving off while leaving behind belongings.
A Cogir staff member and security officer then looked at the outside doorway James had used and saw that the latching system had been tampered with, according to the affidavit.
A former judge advocate general’s officer with the Navy Reserve, Fuller was affectionately called “the captain” by staff members inside the facility.
He had spent much of his life in Augusta, Maine, where he was a well-known lawyer and philanthropist. He self-published a mystery novel titled Unnatural Deaths in 2009.
His death stunned friends from Augusta, who said they couldn’t imagine someone wanting to harm Fuller.
On the night of February 13, Fuller went to bed in his apartment at the Potomac facility. At 7.34am the next morning, he was discovered unresponsive with a wound to his head.
The traffic stop in Baltimore touched off a hunt for a gunman, according to police officials. Maryland state officials said they were on the search for a gunman driving a vehicle with no working headlights and a damaged front end.
“The trooper approached the vehicle and while within inches of the door, the driver opened his door just enough to fire two rounds at our trooper,” the state police superintendent, Jackson, told reporters. “The driver then fled the scene.”
The trooper did not fire any shots, officials said. He was taken to a hospital for injuries and released.
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