Teen escapes from Eastern Shore Hospital Center in Cambridge after accomplice shoots out window

CAMBRIDGE, MD – 19-year-old Darrin Jetter is in custody, and an accomplice is still at large after a shooting at the Eastern Shore Hospital Center Tuesday evening.

According to Cambridge Police, around 5:40 pm Tuesday, an accomplice of Jetter fired three shots into a window at the State-Run psychiatric hospital where Jetter was receiving treatment after assaulting officers.

“One male subject had pulled up into the vehicle, exited with a handgun, shot at a window, and kicked the window out, allowing the second subject to escape from the facility,” said Cambridge Police Captain Ronald Hinson.

Jeter, originally from Rockville, was located in Montgomery County, Maryland and the hunt for his unidentified accomplice is still underway.

“This was a planned escape attempt, it was not a direct assault on any person or any facility there,” Hinson told 47ABC.

AFSCME Council 3, the union that represents state hospital workers, says the attack draws attention to a lack of staffing and security at state-run healthcare facilities.

“Adequate staffing might have helped prevent this because if they had seen someone on the perimeter or seen someone inside the facility, they might not have approached the facility,” said AFSCME Council 3 President Patrick Moran, who says the Hogan administration was responsible for eliminating a work group that looked into resources for patients and staff.

“Adequate staffing might have helped prevent this because if they had seen someone on the perimeter or seen someone inside the facility, they might not have approached the facility,” he said adding that his union has been in touch with officials in the Moore administration who are open to revisiting the concerns raised by previous work groups.

“The previous administration dropped the health and safety protocols and workgroup that we had working with prior administrations, they led to better outcomes for health and safety for the clients and the staff, those were discarded, Moran said adding “The current administration that’s very concerned about the situation is looking at other things that they might do to ensure health, the safer environments for the clients and for the employees there, I think they do need to adopt the Health and Safety Work Workgroup and get that up and running.”

Moran tells us that staffing has improved at the facility, and believes supporting staff members in the facility means moving swiftly to address security concerns.

“If this isn’t a wake-up call that we need to press forward even faster and more aggressively, then I don’t know what is,” Moran said.

47ABC reached out to the MDH for comment and did not receive a response.