Gaithersburg Shooting Suspect Arrested

The 19-year-old fugitive charged in a Jan. 7 shooting in Gaithersburg is in custody and is headed to court next month facing charges that together carry up to 90 years in jail if convicted.

Daniel Floyd Lucas, of Rockville, was arrested Jan. 13, a week after police say he got into an fight in a townhouse in the 1200 block of Knoll Mist Lane that ended with another 19-year-old man shot in the face as he tried to intervene.

Montgomery County Police asked the public for help finding Lucas—who has a history of running from authorities—but have not announced his subsequent arrest.

Charging documents filed in Montgomery County District Court describe a prolonged early-morning brawl that started in the basement, spilled over to the living room, and ended on the staircase of the home in the Montgomery Meadows community off Watkins Mill Road:

Lucas called the house at around 4am on Jan. 7, then arrived an hour later. He headed to the basement to wake up an acquaintance and his girlfriend, where “Lucas began to taunt [him] and a struggle ensued,” according to the documents.

At one point, Lucas briefly brandished an automatic handgun. As the altercation dragged on, the other man’s iPod Touch fell to the ground. The altercation escalated and Lucas took the gun out again, pointing it at the man and his girlfriend and saying he was going to “kill them both,” according to the documents.

The two men continued to “argue and wrestle” for the gun, winding up on the stairway, where Lucas pinned the man beneath him and pointed the gun at him. Just then, a third man came out of a bedroom and tried to break the fight up. The gun went off, and the third man was struck in the face, according to the documents. A witness told police that “the gun was in Lucas’ hand and he was in control of the gun at the time it discharged.”

The victim was taken to a hospital in critical condition. A county police spokeswoman did not know the victim’s status as of today.

The spokeswoman did not have information on what led to Lucas's Jan. 13 arrest. Lucas has a history of running from the law: three years ago, he escaped custody while being taken to the county’s juvenile detention center in Rockville. He eluded police for more than a month, then spent six months in jail after his capture. In the past 14 months, he has been arrested in Montgomery County at least three other times for drug, theft and burglary-related charges. He had outstanding warrants from those three pending cases, according to court records.

Montgomery County Police initially did not provide Lucas’s address; court records after his arrest list an address on North Stonestreet in Rockville. He is charged with three counts of first-degree assault and three counts of reckless endangerment in connection with the Jan. 7 shooting. Bond was initially set at $200,000, then increased last week to $500,000.

He is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on Feb. 10 in Montgomery County District Court.