BALTIMORE -- When Rodney Huey heard Baltimore police Detective Sean Suiter had been fatally shot in West Baltimore, he immediately thought of his own son’s killing.
Nakim Turner, 25, was gunned down in August, and Suiter was the lead detective on the case. Huey and his wife were scheduled to meet with Suiter in a few days to discuss the investigation.
Now, the detective was dead, and Huey worried that the investigation into his son’s killing could be, too.
“If he didn’t keep good notes, or keep anything written down, how will they know what to do?” Huey wondered. “We don’t know what’s going on now.”
Stacy Robinson feels the same way.
Suiter was the lead detective investigating the killing in October of her brother, Antwan Bond, 26, and had been “wonderful” from the start, expressing a genuine desire to solve her brother’s case and visiting her at her home to discuss the case, she said.
“Even from the day at the hospital when everything first transpired, he came up to me very soft spoken, but powerful in what he was saying. Just direct eye contact. He allowed you to take your time, and he wasn’t in a rush,” she said. “We were asking him, ‘Would it go to a cold case? What if there’s no leads?’ And he was like, ‘No, there’s no such thing as a cold case with me. I get to the bottom of things.’ ”
Robinson’s concern now is that the next detective won’t be as caring, and “the ball is going to be dropped,” she said.
Suiter, 43, an 18-year veteran, a husband and a father of five, was shot Nov. 15 while investigating another killing in West Baltimore. He died the next day. His funeral will be held Wednesday.
According to police, Suiter was the primary investigator for 17 active homicides stretching back two years, all of which must now be transferred to other detectives.
That’s not including other homicide and shooting cases in which suspects have been arrested and Suiter was expected to testify.
T.J. Smith, a police spokesman, said the homicide section “works in teams,” and its detectives “will assume the cases and the victim families will be notified of the new investigator.”
Smith said the new investigators will have “all available notes” from Suiter.
“There is no doubt that a sudden loss like this can present some challenges,” Smith said. But he said the department’s detectives “are skilled at assuming a case that once was investigated primarily by someone else” given their experiences with colleagues who retired or were reassigned.
Melba Saunders, a spokeswoman for Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby, said prosecutors have been “thoroughly assessing any effect [Suiter’s] untimely death will have on open and pending cases.”
“Should there be any concerns that impact public safety, we will take the appropriate action to notify the public,” Saunders said.
Huey said his wife called police in the days after Suiter was killed to ask who the new lead detective on their son’s case would be. She was told “everything was just too fresh” to discuss Suiter’s replacement.
He said they have heard nothing from police since then.
With so many killings this year — 316 through Tuesday — homicide investigators were already stretched thin with heavy case loads. They are now dealing with all of Suiter’s cases as well.
In addition to Turner’s case, a double shooting in which 27-year-old Vaughn Riley also was killed, Suiter was working as the lead investigator in at least 13 other cases from late 2015 onward.
On the day Suiter was shot in the 900 block of Bennett Place, he was following up on a triple fatal shooting last year in the same block, in which police said three members of the Black Guerrilla Family gang were killed in a boarded-up home that the gang used as a hangout.
Suiter also was working the August 2016 homicide of 42-year-old Franswhaun Smith, who was killed about two blocks away.
Suiter had two active cases from December 2015, including the killing of 18-year-old Daquan Johnson, who was found fatally shot in a vacant building in Curtis Bay. He was also investigating the killing of 31-year-old George Cookson, who was also found dead from gunshot wounds in a Curtis Bay vacant in January 2017.
Detective Jonathan Jones, who considered himself Suiter’s partner but was not with him on the day he was shot, said Suiter’s death has “taken its toll” on a unit where detectives sometimes work around the clock investigating death.
“I’m doing everything I can just to throw myself back into work so I can try to just work through it,” Jones said Tuesday. “As tough as it is, there’s still families that need closure. There’s still killers out there that need to be caught. It would do Suiter a disservice for us not to do everything we can to find these people.”
Though a squad of homicide detectives from the unit is investigating Suiter’s death, Jones and others who were close to him have been asked to wall themselves off from the case.
Jones said families of victims whose deaths Suiter investigated have been calling him over the past week, passing along their condolences. He said “it was because of how caring and loving he was toward them in their time of need.”
Suiter worked in various roles throughout his 18-year career, rising from drug cases to shootings and robberies to the homicide unit in 2015. Jones said Suiter was a determined investigator.
“He was pushing it, pushing it extra to close cases,” he said. “He wasn’t happy when cases were open.”
Jones and several other fellow officers are scheduled to speak at Suiter’s funeral, as are Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, Mayor Catherine Pugh and Gov. Larry Hogan.
Huey said he had been hopeful about his family’s scheduled meeting with Suiter, but now is unsure whether justice will ever come from the department’s investigation into his son’s killing.
Huey has coached youth football for more than two decades, and through his work with young men in the city has heard things about what happened to his son — who he believes was an unintended target of gunfire.
He said it is difficult “when the streets talk,” but the police department doesn’t seem to act on that intelligence, citing the need for more evidence or witnesses.
If something doesn’t happen soon to restore his faith in the department’s investigation, Huey said, his family is going to start making more noise about his son’s case.
Robinson said she talked to Suiter a few days before he was shot, but her family hasn’t been contacted by the Police Department since then. She feels for Suiter’s family, she said, but also doesn’t want her brother’s case to be forgotten.
“I thought, ‘OK, maybe they might need a week because I know what they’re going through,’ ” she said. “But nobody has called to say, ‘Hi, I’m the new detective. Can I come by?’ or ‘Can we chat on the phone?’ or anything.”
Suiter’s own case remained unsolved Tuesday despite the large-scale investigation underway by police and federal partners and a massive $215,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.
Smith, the police spokesman, said Tuesday on the C4 Show on WBAL radio that “all of the circumstances that would help us find out who a suspect is haven’t been revealed. That’s something we’re working towards.”
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