Off-duty officer fires weapon, suspect taken into custody

No injuries reported

An off-duty city police officer discharged his weapon after he was approached by another man while sitting in his car in North Baltimore, a police spokesman said.

The officer was sitting in his vehicle in the 500 block of Harwood Ave. near York Road with his pregnant girlfriend at about 8 p.m. when a man entered the car, said police spokesman Det. Kevin Brown. The officer and the other man got into a scuffle and, at some point, the off-duty officer fired his weapon. Brown did not know how many shots were fired or whether the other man had a gun.

The suspect is in custody and cooperating, but police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said he had not been charged. Police are still trying to determine what happened, he said.

"We know that the individual entered a vehicle that was being occupied by the officer and a female companion," he said. "We're trying to figure out why that happened and why did it escalate."

The woman was taken to the hospital as a precaution, Brown said, but no other injuries were reported. Police are investigating the possibility that it was a robbery but have not confirmed a motive, Brown said. The incident is not being treated as a police-involved shooting because no people were hit.

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