A man who threatened to kill police if they ever came to his house fired more than 200 rounds at Maryland deputies after they came to his house Tuesday without them firing a single shot back.
Benjamin Murdy fired his guns for more than an hour before he called 911 to turn himself in.
“We’re familiar with him,” Hartford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler told WMAR. “He’s been the subject of a couple of protective orders from a previous relationship and then I think from the current one. I’m not up to spec on all of those, but he had made statements in there that he would take out police if they ever came to the house.”
Murdy did not shoot any officers but he did strike his neighbor in the scrotum who happened to be taking his garbage out when the shooting started.
“Took the first two out and that’s when I heard gunshots going off and I felt something on my right knee,” said Schell, “He grazed my right knee and then I went running around the other side of the truck and then I got hit in my right scrotum.”
Only later would Schell learn his neighbor, 43-year-old Benjamin Murdy, had opened fire from across Oak Ridge Drive on Harford County Sheriff’s deputies who had pulled up to check a report from Murdy’s girlfriend that he had shot and killed her dog during a dispute.
She had left the home with two small children before Murdy turned violent.
We’re not criticizing the deputies for not shooting him, we’re just very surprised because normally 200 rounds fired at officers would result in at least 2,000 rounds being fired back.
Murdy was charged with attempted first and second degree murder, first and second degree assault, reckless endangerment and aggravated animal cruelty.