Baltimore man gets 50 years in killing of girlfriend

A Baltimore man was sentenced to 50 years in prison for the 2017 killing of his girlfriend, a 20year-old aspiring nurse, the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office said Thursday. Marco Holmes, 23, was convicted in May of second-degree murder; use of a firearm in a crime of violence; and wearing, carrying, or transporting a handgun in Tonja Chadwick’s killing. The 50-year sentence Holmes received was the maximum penalty available. Chadwick was reported missing in January 2017. Several days later, her body was found wrapped in blankets and buried under leaves and tree branches in Daisy Field in West Baltimore. She had a gunshot wound to the forehead, and her arms and hands were bruised. Chadwick was a mother of a young son. She was last seen by her aunt on Jan. 28, 2017, before dropping off her child and meeting Holmes at the apartment the couple had moved into the week before, according to the state’s attorney’s office. Chadwick’s aunt called police after she did not return home, and calls to her cellphone went directly to her voicemail. Her phone was later found by a maintenance man outside the Mannasota Manor Apartment Complex, less than a mile from where she lived, and cell phone records showed her phone connected to a cell phone tower near Daisy Field. “While nothing can bring this mother back to her young child, I pray this sentence brings some peace of mind to this family who has had to endure the unimaginable,” State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby said in a statement. “This defendant not only killed this young mother but deceived her family, and he will be locked away from society for a very long time, as he deserves.”