A Virginia woman has been arrested in connection with the shooting of a gas station clerk during an attempted robbery at a Shell station in Columbia, Maryland, according to Howard County Police on April 21.
O'Donnell is currently being held in another state on unrelated charges and is expected to be served with multiple Howard County charges in the coming days, police said.
Surveillance footage captured the moment O'Donnell walked calmly up to the store counter, reached into her purse, and produced a silver revolver, which she pointed at the clerk while apparently demanding he open the cash register. She then fired, striking the employee before fleeing the scene empty-handed. Though only a single shot is visible in the video, investigators said O'Donnell fired multiple times.
The victim, an adult male employee, was rushed to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he remained in serious condition as of April 20.
Howard County detectives had been aggressively pursuing leads in the O'Donnell case before her identity was confirmed. On April 20—three days after the shooting—police publicly released the surveillance footage and announced a reward of up to $2,500 for information leading to the suspect.
Hammer Attack
In a separate case out of Fort Myers, Florida, a Haitian national living in the country illegally has been accused of fatally beating a gas station clerk with a hammer on April 3. The victim in that case, Nilufa "Yasmin" Easmin, a mother of two and native of Bangladesh, was killed after the suspect—identified as Rolbert Joachin—allegedly lured her outside by smashing her car's windshield, then repeatedly struck her on the head with the hammer.That case drew national attention and political commentary, with President Donald Trump weighing in via Truth Social on April 9, calling the killing evidence of what he described as failures of the Biden administration's immigration policies.