Tip leads to arrest in cold case of off-duty officer fatally shot in car [Video]

BALTIMORE (AP) – Baltimore prosecutors on Wednesday announced the arrest of a man in the cold case homicide of an off-duty Washington, D.C., police officer in 2017.

The officer, Sgt. Tony Anthony Mason Jr., was shot to death while sitting in a parked car with a woman he had been dating, according to police. She was also shot but survived.

The case sat unsolved for five years until detectives received a tip in early 2023 that reinvigorated their investigation and led to charges against Dion Thompson, 24, prosecutors said in a news release Wednesday. Thompson, who was 18 at the time of the shooting, is currently serving time in a federal prison on unrelated drug and gun charges.