WASHINGTON — It’s been a week since 56-year-old Daniel Seafolk-Kopp was shot while kayaking in Bodkin Creek in Pasadena, Md., but police have yet to find the culprit.
This weekend Maryland Natural Resources Police will “enhance our visibility there in the Main and Bodkin Creek area,” says spokesperson Candy Thomson. “We haven’t given up, this is still a very active investigation for us,” she said.
Police also hope to gather more information from people who were in the area last weekend, but haven’t yet talked with police. They plan to knock on more doors to see if anyone saw or heard anything.
“We’re hoping that they’ll be home and that we can touch base with them, ask them what they saw, ask them what they heard,” Thomson said.
It not out of the ordinary for people to set off fireworks on the shore near the creek, and that is what a lot of people told police they heard. But now, Thomson says some stories are changing.
“They’re saying given the time frame of 10:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. last Saturday night, perhaps what we heard was a gunshot.”
Any new information, investigators hope, will help them “narrow down the area that we’re talking about,” Thomson said.
For Seafolk-Kopp it was a surreal and painful experience. He told police he was paddling when he noticed a dot on his shirt. Next he saw muzzle flash, heard a gun shot, then felt pain in his abdomen. He had been shot. It took Seafolk-Kopp close to 12 hours to get to the shore and out of his kayak. He finally got the attention of someone who lived nearby and they called 911.
With the increased police presence, investigators still believe the community is safe. Thomas says they still consider the shooting an isolated incident. “We don’t think anyone’s in danger,” she said.
Seafolk-Kopp is from Reston, Va. He did not suffer life threatening injuries and was released from the hospital last Sunday. So far, he is unwilling to return to the area where he was shot.
“We hope at some point he will feel more comfortable and feel better, and we can go with him where he thinks he was when he got shot,” Thomson said.
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