Police shooting of autistic man raises concerns at Howard’s celebrated housing complex

When Tetyana Kuzmenko and her son returned home Sunday evening from an out-of-town trip, they found a note from management on the door of their Columbia apartment and crews cleaning blood from the sidewalk.

Howard County Police had fatally shot their neighbor outside Patuxent Commons, a complex dedicated to supporting adults with disabilities.

It was a shocking scene at the spot where, four months earlier, the county’s elected leaders and advocates had gathered to celebrate the apartment complex’s opening with much fanfare. The 76-unit building was lauded as a pioneering solution to housing instability affecting low-income adults with disabilities, such as autism, as well as older adults and families with children. On Thursday morning, red roses were scattered across the pavement just outside the building’s entrance.

As the Maryland attorney general’s office investigates the fatal shooting of Alexander LaMorie, a 25-year-old man with autism, some families like Kuzmenko’s are questioning whether anything could have been done to prevent it and saying they feel uneasy about Patuxent Commons residents’ safety. Kuzmenko’s 19-year-old son is autistic and verbal, she said, but has difficulty understanding abstract concepts such as laws and rules.

“We’re terrified this could happen to our son,” she said.

Shortly after midnight Sunday, officers responded to a call for service at Patuxent Commons, in the 6400 block of Freetown Road, “for what was determined to be an adult male threatening to harm himself,” police said in a news release.

Three officers opened fire after LaMorie “approached officers holding a knife and disregarded commands to drop the weapon,“ police said in the news release.

LaMorie was declared dead shortly after police attempted lifesaving measures, the release states.

Howard County offers a voluntary, confidential 911 flagging program for residents to notify police of mental, intellectual or physical health concerns. The database alerts officers to potential issues such as autism, Alzheimer’s disease and blindness or deafness before they arrive to a scene.

The department also has a partnership with the nonprofit crisis intervention center Grassroots, which formed a 24-hour mobile crisis team in 2001 to respond to psychiatric emergencies, family crises and traumatic events.

The three officers involved in the shooting did not reach out to Grassroots’ team, Howard County Police spokesperson Sherry Llewellyn said in an email Wednesday, adding they are typically contacted for incidents “of a longer duration.”

Roughly 80% of all county police officers are certified in crisis intervention, which requires 40 hours of training on how to safely and effectively interact with people who have mental health issues and intellectual disabilities, Llewellyn said. The training provides “an advanced level” of behavioral and mental health awareness, trauma-informed policing practices, deescalation techniques and active listening skills.

Two of the officers who responded to the scene at Patuxent Commons had received that certification, she said, and a third was a specially trained negotiator.

The attorney general’s Independent Investigations Division on Tuesday identified the officers involved in Sunday’s shooting as Pfc. Joseph Riebau, a 10-year veteran; Officer Cody Bostic, a six-year veteran; and Officer Joel Rodriguez, a two-year veteran.

None was injured, and police said the three are on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. The officers were equipped with body-worn cameras, and the attorney general’s office said it generally releases footage within 20 days of an incident.

Howard County Executive Calvin Ball on Wednesday acknowledged LaMorie’s death and “the grief felt by family members, the disability community, and all those impacted.”

“While this matter is being investigated by the Attorney General’s office, we want to reaffirm our commitment to public safety and transparency to ensure all our residents, community members, and public safety personnel both are and feel safe in Howard County,” Ball said in a statement.

The LaMorie family said in a statement they are “utterly heartbroken [and,] like many, we struggle to understand the circumstances surrounding his senseless and callous death.”

LaMorie was a member of the Autism & Grief Project advisory board and had spoken of his own experience with grief. The online resource is dedicated to helping adults with autism navigate and cope with grief from death and loss.

Family members said he was excited to become a member of the Patuxent Commons community.

The $44 million housing project, developed by The Autism Society of Maryland and Mission First Housing Group, was designed to be an inclusive community where residents with disabilities could live independently. The project received more than $5 million in county funds, and 19 units were set aside to be rented to low-income residents with disabilities.

Residents began moving in at the end of October, after construction was completed a few weeks prior. As of January, all 76 units were fully leased, according to Becky Lang Staffieri, director of communications for Mission First Housing Group.

Mission First provided grief counseling services to Patuxent Commons residents and staff Sunday and Monday. It hosted a community meeting for residents Wednesday evening.

Kuzamenko said she wants to see more oversight from government officials at Patuxent Commons. In the meantime, she and her husband are planning to keep a closer watch over their son and educating him on how to behave around police.

“We were so ecstatic about this whole experience,” Kuzamenko said of the housing project. “This basically brought us down to earth.”