Police Brutality / Individual record
Gary Carmona Boitano
The Washington Post's Fatal Force database records Gary Carmona Boitano in a fatal on-duty police shooting on 2015-10-09 in Columbia, MD. Individual circumstances and legal outcome require case-specific review.
- Record ID
- PB-274
- Incident date
- October 9, 2015
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- Columbia, MD
- Agency
- Howard County Police Department
- Category
- Fatal on-duty police shooting
- Age (reported)
- 19
What happened
Gary Carmona Boitano, 19, was shot by Howard County police Officer Luke Buchanan outside a house on Cardinal Lane in Columbia, Maryland, on October 9, 2015. Police said they answered a 911 report that a man with a knife was threatening another person. Four officers arrived and encountered Boitano in a driveway. The department said Buchanan repeatedly ordered him to put down the knife, but he refused, and Buchanan fired. Investigators later said they found no one else inside the residence. Buchanan was placed on leave while the county conducted criminal and internal reviews. The apparent discrepancy between the reported caller's emergency and the empty house warrants careful attribution, rather than treating the initial dispatch allegations as established fact.
Investigation & findings
Individual legal and investigative outcome not yet reviewed.
Washington Post Fatal Force v2; 2015–2024
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- 898
- Race code in source
- B
- Race source method
- not_available
- Gender (source)
- male
- Armed status (source)
- knife
- Flee status (source)
- not
- Agency IDs (source)
- 843
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Additional source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Fatal Force v2 — fatal on-duty police shootings, 2015–2024The Washington Post · Dataset