Report of armed man holding woman, children against their will leads to arrest

A Baltimore man charged with holding a Hagerstown woman in her apartment against her will and assaulting her Thursday night also faces gun and drug charges, according to Washington County District Court records.

Andre Eugene Whitley, 29, is charged with first- and second-degree assault, false imprisonment, reckless endangerment and 12 other counts involving drugs, firearms or both, court records show.

He was ordered held without bail Friday pending a bail review hearing scheduled for Monday, court records show.

Hagerstown Police responded at 7:56 p.m. Thursday to a report that an armed man was holding a woman and her children against their will in her apartment in the 100 block of South Potomac Street, according to the charging document filed against Whitley.

Officers heard sounds of a disturbance at the door and were let in by the woman, who said, "he's in my bedroom" and pointed toward the rear of the apartment. She "appeared to be afraid, and retreated into a bedroom to the street side of the apartment with several terrified looking children," the document said.

Whitley had fled out the back and was arrested outside, police said in a news release.

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The woman told police that Whitley did not live with her, but that they had been dating since August and that he always carries a rusty .38-caliber revolver in his right jacket pocket. She said he had been acting erratically since Tuesday, so on Wednesday she unloaded the gun and threw the bullets out the window. She said he became enraged and wouldn't let her leave until she told him where the bullets were, according to the document.

She said he pushed her onto the bed and straddled and choked her, and that she thought he was going to kill her. She yelled for her daughter to call police and Whitley left. She took the children to stay with a relative and told police that she couldn't stay at her home because Whitley had taken her keys, the document said.

The woman said when she came home with the children Thursday morning, Whitley walked in, cornered her and said she wasn't going to leave. She said she was afraid he would hurt her if she tried to go, the document said.

She said that after an hour, she escaped and ran to a nearby business with Whitley chasing her. Police heard a woman yelling for help, made contact with her and tried to contact Whitley, but he fled in his vehicle, according to the document.

The woman said she thought Whitley's flight from police would keep him away for a while so she went to work, but she got a text message from her son around 4 p.m. saying that Whitley had returned. When she went home to confront Whitley, he again cornered her in her bedroom, told her she couldn't leave and said that "if she called someone to the house he would shoot them," the document said.

She said that Whitley refused to leave and continued to hold her and her children until police arrived that night. The woman said she didn't see a gun, but that Whitley periodically straddled her and placed his hand in his jacket pocket where she knew he kept one, the document said.

At some point, she escaped to the children's bedroom and was able to send a text message to a relative who called police, according to the charging document and the news release.

No gun was found on Whitley when he was apprehended, so officers looked for it in the apartment and found the same type of drug paraphernalia that Whitley had when he was taken into custody. A police K9, Jackie, later found a loaded Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver and the woman's keys behind the business she had run to earlier, the document said.

Whitley had suspected marijuana and suspected crack cocaine on him when he was arrested, and police found more suspected crack cocaine in the back seat of the police car that transported him, the document said.

A search of Whitley's car turned up 15 rounds of ammunition, 42 capsules of suspected fentanyl, 33 capsules of suspected crack cocaine and nine vials of suspected marijuana, police said in the news release.

Whitley told police that he had been living with the woman since August and that they weren't getting along because he suspected her of cheating on him. He said they had an argument on Wednesday, but that they made up and he stayed the night. He denied putting his hands on her "except to push her away when she was attacking him," the charging document said.

He said they had another argument the next morning and he let her leave, but she kicked his car so he chased her. He said he was leaving when police pulled up and that he didn't stop because he didn't realize they wanted to talk to him, the document said.

Whitley told police that when he returned to the residence a few hours later, the woman began arguing with him as the aggressor. He denied having a gun "at any point in time," the document said.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Baltimore man charged with false imprisonment of Hagerstown woman