An Eagle Scout who was mistaken for a bank robber and shot in the face by an FBI agent in Pasadena on Friday remained in serious but stable condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center last night.

Joseph Charles Schultz, 20, was shot at close range about 6 p.m. Friday when FBI agents searching for a bank robbery suspect pulled over his girlfriend's car.

Schultz, who lives in the 7900 block of Seabreeze Drive in Orchard Beach in Anne Arundel County and works with fiber optics for a local medical company, has no connection to the bank robbery, officials said.

At the time of the shooting, Schultz, who graduated from Northeast High School in Pasadena in 2000, was a passenger in a Pontiac Grand Am driven by his girlfriend, 16-year-old Krissy Harkum.

The couple was returning from a trip to Marley Station Mall in Glen Burnie when plainclothes federal agents in unmarked cars pulled them over near Key Bridge Discount Liquors at 7212 Fort Smallwood Road, according to Harkum's father, Joseph Harkum. Carrying weapons that his daughter, a junior honor student at Northeast, described as "assault rifles or machine guns," the agents ordered them to put their hands up, he said.

That's when the agent on the passenger's side opened fire, striking Schultz once, he said.

 

'Yeah, I'm angry'

"Here you got two of the sweetest kids on the Earth going to the mall and having Slurpees, getting shot through the car window. It's a mess. Yeah, I'm angry," Harkum said from his Pasadena home.

FBI spokesman Barry Maddox said agency policy prevented the immediate release of the name of the agent who shot Schultz.

He also declined to comment on whether the agent has been assigned to desk duty pending an investigation of the shooting. Nor have FBI officials released information about how the shooting took place.

"It's an ongoing investigation, and under most circumstances we do not give out too much information," Maddox said.

Harkum said his daughter was struck by glass and blood but was uninjured in the shooting. Still, she remained shaken yesterday.

 

'She's not doing too good'

"She had nightmares about it," Harkum said.

"She's not doing too good. Emotionally, she's not OK," he said.

Krissy Harkum remained at Schultz's bedside last night. Though he was unable to speak, her father said, she told him that Schultz wrote her a note asking, "Why did he shoot me?"

Family members reached at Schultz's home referred reporters' calls to attorney Joseph C. Asensio, who did not return repeated calls seeking information last night.

Yesterday afternoon, agents assigned to the FBI's shooting review group based in Washington scoured the scene for the agency's internal investigation.

Anne Arundel County police officers continued their probe of the shooting yesterday and were setting up interviews with witnesses, said Officer Charles Ravenell.

Sun staff writer Lynn Anderson contributed to this article.