Maryland Shooting Survivor Dodged Bullets as He Fled

A survivor of the workplace shooting in Maryland on Oct. 18 described running away as the shooter fired at him.

The shooter, Radee Prince, punched one co-worker, then shot five others. Michael Serra, an employee at Advanced Granite Solutions in Edgewood, Maryland, witnessed the whole attack.

“He hit a friend of mine, and then my friend told him, ‘What happened?’” Serra told a reporter. “And then later, the guy pulled out a gun and started shooting at anyone he could find.”

“Sadly, I saw my friend fall, and then the second,” Serra said. “I came back and saw it was five—three dead, two wounded.”

Serra said the attack lasted for only “seconds,“ saying that Prince was ”very agile, very fast.”

One of Serra’s friends was killed while making coffee.

Prince reportedly gathered some employees in the break room, telling them, “Come with me, I want to say something to everybody.”

“He talked to me first,” said one co-worker who asked not to be identified. “Then I saw him talk to another friend. Nobody listened to him, because his reaction was to start a fight.”

“Every one of the victims that this individual shot, the victims and the offender knew each other. So these were targeted shootings, for whatever reason,” explained Wilmington Delaware Police Chief Robert Tracy.

Serra was lucky enough to have time to escape. He saw Prince firing at him as he fled, but the bullets flew past.

Harford County Maryland Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said, “My suspicion is, if he could have shot more individuals, this incident would have resulted in a greater loss of life.”

Prince, an employee at the company, killed three coworkers and wounded two others. He later wounded a third person at a Delaware car dealership before being arrested in Delaware later that night.

The Harford County Sheriff’s Office has identified the slain victims as Jose Hidalgo Romero, 34, of Aberdeen, Maryland; Enis Mrvoljak, 48, of Dundalk, Maryland; and Bayarsaikhan Tudev, 53, of Arlington, Virginia.

Unbeknownst to his co-workers, Prince had been fired from a job in February for attacking a co-worker, and had returned to that job site to threaten his former boss, who filed for a restraining order.

“I felt very threatened because he is a big guy and very aggressive on me,” his former boss wrote in the restraining order application.

He stated Prince did not get physical with him, but “I do not want to wait until he will. Plus, he already punched a co-worker. He can also do it to me.” The order was denied.

Prince had an extensive record—42 felony and misdemeanor arrests—and 15 felony convictions, including illegal possession of a firearm. Many of the arrests were for alcohol or driving violations. Most were not prosecuted.

In 2003 Prince was convicted in Delaware on 15 counts of third-degree burglary. He was sentenced to 25 years, of which he ultimately served only three before being released on probation.

Prince faces charges of murder, attempted murder, assault, and use of a firearm to commit a felony. He pleaded not guilty to all the charges at his Thursday, Oct. 19, arraignment in Delaware.

A friend of several of the victims, Lauren Arikan, announced at a press conference that donations for the victims and their families would be accepted through the website www.edgewooddonations.com.