A Baltimore County jury began deliberating Wednesday afternoon in the case of David Linthicum, a Cockeysville man accused of shooting two county officers in February 2023.

David Linthicum, who turned 26 last week, is accused of firing a rifle at three police officers who responded to his father’s 911 call, in which he said his son was suicidal and had a gun, before shooting a police detective on a nearby road the next day.

Circuit Judge Garret P. Glennon dismissed jurors for the day at 5:30 p.m., after they had deliberated for about two hours. At one point, jurors sent court staff a note asking for “extra large gloves” to handle evidence.

Prosecutors initially charged Linthicum with 27 counts, including multiple counts of attempted murder, assault, carjacking and related offenses. During the trial, state prosecutors decided to dismiss or not to pursue some of charges, eliminating all the charges related to the alleged assault of Linthicum’s father, John.

After Linthicum fled the Powers Avenue home he shared with his father on Feb. 8, 2023, Baltimore County Police and other agencies spent nearly two days searching for him before his arrest in Fallston early Feb. 10.

During what attorneys described as a “manhunt,” Linthicum shot and wounded county Detective Jonathan Chih when Chih pulled his police truck over on the side of Warren Road for someone he thought was a hitchhiker. Linthicum stole Chih’s truck and took off into Harford County.

During Assistant State’s Attorney Zarena Sita’s closing argument Wednesday, she instructed jurors not to be “distracted” by criticisms of the police response raised by the defense, including damage SWAT teams did to the Powers Avenue house or the fact that an officer left his body-worn camera while Linthicum was at the hospital, recording him unclothed.

Sita also said that “suicide by cop,” something the defense has claimed Linthicum was aiming to achieve, is still a crime.

Linthicum fired 16 shots at Baltimore County officers Barry Jordan, April Burton (then named April Arnett) and David Allen in the basement, then fired 14 shots at Chih a day later, Sita said.

Slowing down body-camera footage shown throughout the trial so it proceeded frame by frame, Sita pointed to when Jordan’s body camera captured Linthicum lying on his bed, pointing a rifle at police. In another video, bullet holes suddenly appear in a wall as the officers flee upstairs. She described Linthicum as “lying in wait” for police to arrive.

“He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want help,” Sita said. “He just wanted to shoot.”

To find Linthicum guilty of first-degree attempted murder, jurors must find that his attempt to kill the officers was premeditated.

Sita said Linthicum emptied his 30-round magazine at Chih the day after shooting at officers in the basement.

“The fact that the defendant ran out of bullets may have saved Detective’s Chih’s life,” she said, indicating a rifle casing in a crime scene photo near a patch of Chih’s blood that she said Linthicum believed “was his kill shot.”

“Two things can be true,” Sita said, “the defendant can be depressed and also want to hurt police.”

Throughout the six-day trial, public defenders Deborah Katz Levi and James Dills described Linthicum as mentally ill and suicidal, saying he fired out of desperation when he encountered police. The defense team scrutinized various aspects of the police response, including the officers’ decision to walk into the basement where they had been told Linthicum had a rifle and failures to fully brief officers like Chih on the search for Linthicum.

“Had everyone involved done what they were trained to do, we wouldn’t be here,” said Levi, adding that officers assumed “irrational risk” and ignored their training when they walked into the basement to approach an armed and suicidal young man without backup.

She said there wasn’t proof Linthicum knew he was firing at police officers in the basement, describing him as a son in the midst of an emotional fight with his father.

Levi also compared the three officers’ actions unfavorably to those of Harford County Sheriff’s Sgt. Anthony DeMarino, who testified Tuesday, and played video footage of DeMarino having a calm conversation with Linthicum in the Fallston woods as helicopters whirred overhead.

In the exchange shouted across distance, Linthicum and the sergeant discussed DeMarino’s previous job as a private chef for Baltimore Oriole Cal Ripken Jr. and cooking soup and ragu.

“This is not a conversation with someone who wants to kill police officers,” Levi said.

She also said Linthicum believed Chih had arrived to kill him and shot to defend himself.

She instructed jurors to “send a message” to prosecutors on behalf of people who experience mental health issues by acquitting Linthicum of all charges except for the count of motor vehicle theft for stealing Chih’s police truck, which she admitted there was no defense for.

“You can say to the state, everybody was wrong that day,” she said.

In a rebuttal, Deputy State’s Attorney John Cox said Linthicum hated cops and called Levi’s criticisms of the police officers “outrageous.”

“We’re dealing with literal heroes,” he said. “They put their lives on the line for you.”

The three county officers who Linthicum shot at in the Powers Avenue home Feb. 8 sat in the first row of the courtroom gallery on Wednesday, wearing their police vests.