Queen Anne's Sheriff's Deputy Shot In Chesterstown

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- A Queen Anne's Sheriff's Deputy was shot and the suspect who he exchanged gunfire with was killed during an early morning shooting Thursday.

Police say it was around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday when 52-year-old James L. Rich III's girlfriend, who was staying with him at his home in the 200 block of Edmore Road in Chestertown, sent a text message to her father stating they had been involved in a physical altercation.

Her father called 911 and deputies responded to the home, but both Rich and the woman had left. It was later determined that her father had picked her up and taken her to the Sheriff's office.

Shortly after midnight, the woman gave a report on the domestic violence incident and was escorted back to the home to get some of her belongings.

When the woman, the deputy and the woman's parents arrived back at the home, Rich and his teen son were already there.

Investigators say they started arguing again, at which point Rich went into a back bedroom and armed himself with a shotgun. He fired a round, and continued toward Deputy Warren Scott Hogan, firing again. Hogan returned fire. Both were hit.

Warren, who is a four year veteran, was flown to shock trauma and is currently listed in critical condition. He was hit by a shotgun blast into the torso.

"The zone of injury is much, much bigger with a shotgun blast," Dr. Thomas Scalea, physician in chief at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, said at a Thursday morning press conference.

When he was admitted, he was "awake and talking but clearly critically injured" when he was admitted, Scalea says. "We have completed at least the first of his operative procedures. He is still quite ill but we are hopeful."

Rich was taken to the University of Maryland Shore Medical Center at Chestertown, where he died this morning.

Sheriff Gary Hofmann says Hogan is a four-year veteran of the Queen Anne County Sheriff's Office, though he does have about 7 years of prior law enforcement experience.

Hogan was wearing body armor, but the blast hit him below that area that body armor covers, Hofmann said.

State Police spokesman Greg Shipley says Hogan was wearing a body camera, as well.

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