Teen found dead inside parked car in Glen Burnie

GLEN BURNIE, Md. — A call for ‘shots fired’ early Wednesday at the Willows apartment complex in Glen Burnie, as people awoke to a crime scene outside their front doors.

“Everything was taped up. There were helicopters flying around. It was just crazy. It was a mess,” said Taylor Blanks, “I saw one car get towed away… a couple of gunshots in the side of his car… a black car. They didn’t really tell us nothing. They just said it was a shooting.”

All police will tell us is that officers arriving on the scene discovered 17-year-old Anthony Tyrell Johnson dead from multiple gunshot wounds inside a parked car.

Anne Arundel County Public Schools confirmed that Johnson was a sophomore at North County High School.

While it was dark at the time of the shooting, it happened here in the very heart of the complex literally within view of dozens of apartments all facing the parking lot.

James France and his fiancee were awakened by what turned out to be gunshots.

“She was like, ‘What was that?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know’, and she said, ‘It sounds like someone might be at the door.’ Three loud bangs,” recounted France.

As he walked out on his balcony, France spotted three masked men standing around what turned out to be the shooting victim’s car.

“One person standing to the front and two on the driver’s side. The driver’s door was like cocked halfway open, and I thought they were breaking in cars, because of the noise, so I yell out, ‘Hey!’ and as soon as I yelled that, they started taking off right up this way.”

Only when police arrived a short time later did France learn the men hadn’t been taking any valuables.

They were taking a life, and he told is fiancee he wished he could have been there for the victim in his last moments.

“I couldn’t even see someone was in the car. I told her, ‘Do you think it would have mattered all those seconds or a minute or two?’ and she said, ‘I don’t know… you know what I mean? Put it on you like that.’”