(Newser) – A Maryland software developer who was shot and killed by a police officer was asleep in his bedroom when police opened fire from outside his house, an attorney for the 21-year-old man’s family said Friday. The man's girlfriend was wounded. The Montgomery County Police Department said in a news release Friday that Duncan Socrates Lemp "confronted" police and was shot by one of the officers early Thursday. Rene Sandler, an attorney for Lemp's relatives, said an eyewitness gave a "completely contrary" account of the shooting. The department's news release on Friday says tactical unit members were serving a "high-risk" search warrant around 4:30am when one of the unit's officers fatally shot Lemp. Police detectives recovered three rifles and two handguns from the home, per the AP.

Lemp was prohibited from possessing firearms, police said. Sandler said the family believes police fired gunshots, not a flash-bang grenade or other projectile, from outside the home while he and his girlfriend were sleeping. On an internet forum called "My Militia," someone who IDed himself as Duncan Lemp of Potomac said he was "an active III%'r and looking for local members & recruits." That's an apparent reference to the Three Percenters, a wing of the militia movement. Nobody in the house that morning had a criminal record, Lemp's relatives said in a statement released Friday. "Any attempt by the police to shift responsibility onto Duncan or his family, who were sleeping when the police fired shots into their home, is not supported by the facts," the statement says. The police department is investigating. Howard County prosecutors will review the evidence at the conclusion of the investigation.

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