Quote:A Johns Hopkins University student armed with a samurai sword killed a man who broke into the garage of his off-campus residence early Tuesday, a Baltimore police spokesman said.

According to preliminary reports, a resident of the 300 block of E. University Parkway called police about a suspicious person, department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. An off-duty officer responded about 1:20 a.m. to the area with university security, according to Guglielmi. They heard shouts and screams from a neighboring house and found the suspected burglar suffering from a nearly severed hand and lacerations to his upper body, he said.

The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene.

The student told police that he heard a commotion in the house and went downstairs armed with a samurai sword, Guglielmi said. He saw the side door to the garage had been pried open and found a man inside, who lunged at the student.

Detectives were still interviewing the student and his three roommates Tuesday morning, Guglielmi said. Burglars had already stolen two laptops and a Sony PlayStation from the student's home Monday, according to Guglielmi.

Dennis O'Shea, a spokesman for Johns Hopkins, said all four residents of the house are undergraduate students at the university.

The suspected burglar, whose name was not released pending notification of next of kin, had prior convictions for breaking and entering and had just been released Saturday from a Baltimore County facility, Guglielmi said.

Quote:September 15, 2009
Hopkins student kills intruder with sword

Just hours after an off-duty Baltimore police officer shot and critically wounded a man who he said tried to hold him up at gunpoint, authorities tells us a Johns Hopkins student used a samuari sword to kill a man breaking into his garage on University Parkway.

The Johns Hopkins student was still being interviewed by homicide detectives this morning, but from initial statements from a police spokesman it appears this killing was justified. It does highlight crime in the off-campus area around Hopkins.

The name of the intruder has not yet been released but police said he has a prior record of break-ins. The name of the student hasn't been made public either; in the past, police have released the name of every citizen who kills another, even when ruled justified (it's up to prosecutors, not police, anyway).

But city police have new rules in which they typically do not make public the names of officers who shoot civilians. I'm interested to see what they do in this case; they previously released a report with the name of a North Baltimore store owner who shot a robber, but the robber didn't die and was charged, and the name of the shooter was in the court papers anyway.