State investigators on Wednesday identified the Howard County Police officer involved in an attempted traffic stop before a fatal single-vehicle crash involving a juvenile driver early Saturday.

The officer is First Class Brian Maurantonio, a four-year veteran who is assigned to the department’s traffic enforcement section, according to the Maryland Attorney General’s Independent Investigations Division.

The name of the minor, a female, is being withheld because of youth privacy laws.

In the early hours of Saturday, Maurantonio, traveling in an unmarked police department vehicle, attempted to pull over a 2010 Honda Accord around 1:50 a.m., according to county police. Maurantonio was conducting traffic stops on Route 29 near Johns Hopkins Road in Fulton.

The Honda did not stop, instead crashing into a wooded area as the minor attempted to take the ramp from Route 32 onto Broken Land Parkway in Columbia. The car quickly caught fire.

Officers attempted to put the fire out until the Howard County Fire Department arrived.

The minor was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office has previously pointed to the juvenile secrecy law in withholding information, though it is also an outlier in how it applies the law to incidents involving youths. Area police departments still disclose crime incidents involving youths, while withholding their names. And they routinely release the names of young people who are killed or die.

The state law is indeed broad, however. It says: “A police record concerning a child is confidential and shall be maintained separate from those of adults. Its contents may not be divulged, by subpoena or otherwise, except by order of the court upon good cause shown or as otherwise provided in § 7–303 of the Education Article.”

Howard County Police, which would typically release the name of anyone killed in a traffic accident, said they had to defer to the attorney general’s office because it was leading the investigation. The Office of the Attorney General said it could not immediately comment Wednesday on its decision to withhold the name.

The Attorney General’s Office also withheld the name of a teen shot and killed by Baltimore Police in 2024, but the city police department released the teen’s name in accordance with their policies.

Banner reporter Justin Fenton contributed to this article.