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Source: Panel determines York County resident and Baltimore police officer Sean Suiter took his own life

BALTIMORE — An independent panel tasked with reviewing the November 2017 death of Baltimore police officer and York County resident Sean Suiter has conclu...
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BALTIMORE — An independent panel tasked with reviewing the November 2017 death of Baltimore police officer and York County resident Sean Suiter has concluded that the officer took his own life, a source familiar with the panel’s findings told the Baltimore Sun on Monday.

It’s not clear how the board came to its conclusion, and there is no word on when the official report will be formally released, according to the Sun.

The Maryland medical examiner’s officer initially ruled Suiter’s death a homicide, but there were a flurry of contrasting opinions about the case since the investigation’s early stages, the Sun reports. Some believed the evidence pointed to Suiter’s death being a suicide staged to look like a killing, while others believed that theory was an easy out for a police department that was struggling to solve the case.

Suiter, a resident of Conewago Township in York County, was fatally shot in November while conducting a follow-up investigation of a triple homicide in West Baltimore. As members of the police department investigated, a reward of more than $200,000 was offered for information leading to Suiter’s suspected killer, the Sun reports.

Police said Suiter was shot with his own gun. The Sun reported in March that body camera footage from first responding officers showed the weapon was found under his body. He had been shot behind the right ear, with the angle of the bullet traveling forward.

Suiter, 43, was set to testify before a grand jury investigation into alleged corruption involving a member of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force, the Sun reports. In 2011, the Sun says, Suiter had taken part in an arrest in which federal prosecutors allege drugs were planted on a man who fled the officers and got into a deadly crash. Suiter was not a target of the investigation, the Sun reports.

According to the Sun, investigators never recovered DNA or fingerprints of a suspect.

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