Police are seeking answers after a man was gunned down in a downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, parking garage Wednesday night.
Officers with the Montgomery County Police Department were called to the Wayne Avenue Garage around 9 p.m. Wednesday and found the victim — identified Thursday as 62-year-old Charles Joseph Reynolds — suffering from a gunshot wound inside a stairwell. He died at the scene.
In a news briefing, Chief of Police Marcus Jones said Reynolds, a Silver Spring resident, had been eating dinner at a restaurant with his family. Reynolds was headed back to his car to drop off the leftovers before joining his family for ice cream when he was fatally shot in a second-floor stairwell facing Ellsworth Drive.
Montgomery County police had neither identified a suspect nor ascribed a motive to Reynolds’ killing as of Thursday. Nothing appeared to have been stolen from Reynolds, Jones said, and his car remained parked on the garage’s third floor.
Footage pulled from nearby security cameras has yet to turn up any leads, leading Jones to plead for the public’s help in reporting suspicious activity around the time of the shooting.
“We are vigorously looking for leads, and we really want to focus on having the public assist us because we know this is a heavily trafficked area, both with vehicles as well as foot traffic,” Jones said. “We have to believe that somebody saw something.”
MCPD third district commander Cpt. David McBain said officers would up their presence around garages in Silver Spring’s central business district, including high-visibility foot patrols inside stairwells.
“These efforts will continue for the foreseeable future until we can get some answers to this horrific crime,” McBain said.
Anyone with information can contact detectives by calling 1-866-411-TIPS (8477). Callers can remain anonymous. Montgomery County offers a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a homicide suspect.
