BALTIMORE — The man fatally shot by a Baltimore County Police lieutenant in October was hit in the upper right of his back after first firing at least one shot at the lieutenant, according to a report released Monday by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office.
The bullet entry wound indicated Jovan Singleton, 36, had turned away when he was shot, the report stated. Investigators wrote it was possible Singleton had turned to flee after Lt. Gregory Mead began to shoot, but there wasn’t enough evidence to say definitively.
Police have said Singleton and Mead exchanged gunfire after Mead responded to a report of a vehicle crash near a robbery at a 7-Eleven on Windsor Mill Road around 2 a.m. Oct. 11.
Singleton was found dead by police about five hours after the shooting in the side yard of a home in the Woodlawn area, about 173 feet away from the shooting scene.
None of the interaction was captured by bodyworn camera because Mead didn’t activate his equipment, which the report notes is likely a violation of departmental policy.
Mead won’t face criminal charges in connection with Singleton’s shooting, the Baltimore County Deputy State’s Attorney wrote in a letter earlier this month after reviewing the findings of the Independent Investigations Division, the unit of the attorney general’s office charged with such investigations.
Deputy State’s Attorney Robin Coffin said the shooting was “justified for the protection of Lt. Mead’s life and the surrounding community.”
The report is the first to be released since the division began investigating statewide police-involved fatalities last October under police reform legislation passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 2021. The division is tasked with investigating such incidents and preparing a report with findings and legal analysis, but not making a prosecutorial decision.
In this case, the report considered a series of criminal statutes, including intentional second-degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment.
The analysis found it would be difficult for prosecutors to prove Mead didn’t act in self-defense, and that evidence suggested Mead “reasonably believed” Singleton posed an imminent or immediate threat of death.
That conclusion was reached, the report said, because evidence indicated that Mead fired his weapon in “immediate response to Mr. Singleton initiating fire,” the two men were close together when they exchanged gunfire, Mead thought he had been shot in the knee and had reason to believe there could be other suspects in the area.
It adds that evidence doesn’t indicate gross negligent conduct caused Singleton’s death or that Mead’s conduct was unreasonable.
The report does note an inconsistency in Mead’s accounts of the number of shots exchanged. He initially told officers he’d fired three or four times, then wrote he’d fired six or seven times. He also initially said Singleton had fired three or four rounds, then told the investigators in written responses he didn’t know how many total shots had been fired.
He also said that Singleton “advanced toward me before and as I fired” — a description that is contradicted by Singleton’s gunshot wound, according to the report.
“The location of the entry wound indicates that Mr. Singleton had turned away when Lt. Mead fired the round that struck him,” the report said.
Mead provided a written statement and responses to the Independent Investigations Division’s questions rather than submitting to an interview. He subsequently was interviewed by a Maryland State Police sergeant, at the request of Deputy State’s Attorney Robin Coffin, according to her declination letter.
That interview was not included in the report, but Attorney General Brian Frosh wrote in a response to Coffin earlier this month that the division would issue a supplemental report. It has not yet been released.
According to the narrative provided in the report released Monday, the incident began when a 7-Eleven was robbed at gunpoint early that October morning. A person matching the suspect’s description was captured on camera getting into a truck that drove away, before crashing into another vehicle about a mile away. The driver struck by the truck said three or four people fled.
Mead told investigators he heard about the robbery and hit-and-run incidents and went to respond to the crash scene. On the way, he saw Singleton, and attempted to stop him for questioning. He asked Singleton to sit on the curb, but Singleton ran away on foot.
During the pursuit, according to Mead, Singleton turned and fired at Mead. The lieutenant returned fire, he said, and then Singleton ran away between two homes.
Mead said he was unsure which way Singleton’s body was facing because he was “returning fire at a silhouette with a muzzle flash.”
Mead radioed in about the gunfire exchange at 2:11 a.m. He said he had been shot, but an injury to his knee turned out not to be a gunshot wound. Redactions to the report remove information about the nature of the injury.
A police officer found Singleton’s body nearby around 7 a.m.
Redactions also block information about the search for Singleton. What’s left indicates Baltimore County Police “established a perimeter” and took some steps to try to find Singleton, but for “officer safety reasons,” a captain didn’t deploy a foot search right away.
Mead said in his written statement that after the shooting he was “concerned that there were other suspects in the area that had been involved in the armed robbery/bail out as I believe the two incidents to be related.”
Maryland State Police, tasked with helping investigate the Independent Investigations Division cases, interviewed about two dozen neighbors in the days after the shooting. None saw it, but most heard gunshots, with four specifically stating they heard one or two shots, followed by a brief pause, then four to seven shots.
Neighbors also described hearing someone near their homes after the shooting.
Singleton’s body was ultimately found in the side yard of one home. Blood was found on the front porch of the residence, but the report said residents didn’t report noticing anyone trying to enter their home.
Investigators also recovered two sets of bullet casings from the scene, about 37 feet apart.
They included a single .380 caliber casing, which matched a Grendel handgun found about 50 feet away from Singleton’s body, according to the report. Singleton’s DNA was found on the firearm and its magazine.
Eight 9-mm casings also were found, as well as a 9-mm bullet recovered from a car parked on the street. The casings and bullet came from Mead’s service weapon, a ballistics analysis found.
This was Mead’s first shooting incident, the report said. There were no internal affairs complaints against him found to be substantiated since his career began in 1996, it said.
It’s not clear why Mead didn’t activate his bodyworn camera, as police policy requires. After the shooting, he told another officer he had been rushing to respond, but his written statement said he was trying to plug the cord into the battery as he left the station, according to the report.
“He gives no explanation as to why he did not successfully plug the camera cord into the battery, nor is there any indication that the equipment was broken or malfunctioning,” the report said.
Mead was captured on another officer’s body camera using an expletive to say he knew his camera wasn’t on but that he “just ran out of the precinct.”
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