‘Really scary’: Latest Towson shooting puts community on edge

Students at an off-campus housing complex near Towson University received a shelter-in-place alert last Sunday: “This is not a drill,” it said.

An 18-year-old had been shot in the chest at an intersection near the Cardiff Hall Apartments and the campus was locked down. A SWAT team from Baltimore County Police appeared and ordered everyone out of the apartment building. Inside, students in one apartment were told to leave with their hands up.

“They had guys at the doors with AR,” said Aden, a student who declined to give his last name because of fears for his safety. He, his roommate and two friends were zip-tied and detained on the curb outside the apartment for four hours, he said.

Police arrested 17 people, ages 15 to 31 — including three Towson University students — at Cardiff Hall Apartments on firearms charges. Police are investigating whether the guns recovered are tied to that shooting.

All of the adults who were arrested are being held without bond. The detention statuses of the teens are unknown because youth court records are shielded in Maryland.

The shooting — coming after several high-profile incidents of violence in Baltimore County — has the community on edge.

“Obviously, [I’m] kind of shocked that something like this would happen,” Aden said. “But what’s the chance that that’s gonna happen again, especially in the same area?”

Witnesses to Sunday’s shooting flooded responding officers with information, according to court records.

One person led officers to the intersection where police found the man who had been shot. Another bystander told officers they saw the shooting and believed that a rifle had been used.

A witness reported seeing a group of men run into an apartment in Cardiff Hall close to where officers found several cartridge casings on the ground.

Detectives filed a search warrant for the residence and found a cache of guns, including an H&K rifle and three Glock handguns, two of which were equipped with switches — small devices that transform a semiautomatic firearm into a fully automatic gun.

‘Perception is the issue’

The past several months have been marked by a series of high-profile violent incidents in Towson: An armed carjacking in the Towson Town Center parking lot in April; a 22-year-old Towson University student shot and killed near Towson Circle in June; and Sunday’s shooting.

During a town hall in Towson in late June, Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough acknowledged that residents are feeling increasingly unsafe, even though department data shows crime is down across the county.

“Perception is the issue, and perception is reality, right?” he said. “If we ... perceive that we’re unsafe, and we feel unsafe, then that’s our reality.”

A Banner analysis of the county’s crime statistics reveals that total crime is down by about 18% from January to July, compared to the same period in 2025.

The Towson precinct has seen a similar decline.

Two Towson University sophomores — one of whom lives alone — were at their weekly sorority chapter meeting when the university went on lockdown, which lasted about three hours.

“It was definitely really scary when it first happened, especially knowing it happened right outside my front door,” one said.

The other student said the shooting has struck a nerve among students living in the apartment complex.

She was not allowed back inside her unit, which she said is just a few feet away from where the man was shot, until last Monday.

“We’ve never been put into lockdown before, and it’s never been so close to home,” she said.