Judge orders three trials for 5 charged
4 defendants accused of opening fire, with 5th alleged to have displayed gun
There will be three trials for the five people charged in connection with the mass shooting at the Brooklyn Homes community last summer, a Baltimore judge ruled Thursday.
Circuit Judge Jeffrey M. Geller denied prosecutors’ request to try all five defendants together, instead splitting up the cases based on what he believed would be the most efficient use of the court’s resources while maintaining rights of the people charged to have fair trials.
Geller ordered 18-yearold Tristan Jackson and 19-year-old Aaron Brown be prosecuted together, with each facing seven counts of attempted first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder, along with assault and firearms offenses.
Two minors, ages 16 and 15, will stand trial together on charges of attempted murder, assault and firearms offenses. A 17-yearold will have his own trial on firearms offenses.
Judges denied requests to transfer each of the minors’ cases to juvenile court, meaning they will be prosecuted as adults. The Baltimore Sun does not name minors accused of crimes.
Trial dates have not been set yet. Attorneys for each of the defendants are due in the city Circuit Court’s reception court docket
Friday to schedule trial dates. In court Thursday, Geller said he expected to preside over the three trials.
Geller’s decision followed an approximately two-anda-half-hour hearing where defense attorneys and prosecutors were at loggerheads over the evidence in the case and whether it was fair to have one trial for all of the defendants.
Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Dunty, head of the prosecutors’ office’s homicide unit, said the defen
dants’ actions collectively caused last year’s annual Brooklyn Day celebration to devolve into “mass chaos” after midnight July 2. Four of the defendants are accused of opening fire, with a fifth alleged to have displayed a gun during the event.
“They’re all charged with rioting, creating terror,” said Dunty, who described in court a video captured by an officer’s body camera showing a young woman taking cover behind a house, too scared of being shot to leave her hiding place even with police assurances.
Two people were shot dead that night and another 28 were wounded by gunfire. Nobody has been charged in the killings of 18-year-old Aaliyah Gonzalez and 20-year-old Kylis Fagbemi.
Amongst the debris left from the party, police documented evidence of what was one of Baltimore’s worst mass shootings. Crime scene technicians picked up more than 100 cartridge casings that were fired from at least 12 different guns, officials have said.
Police and prosecutors have not determined who shot which of the 28 people who survived gunshot injuries. For the defendants accused of opening fire, they are charged with the attempted murder of “unknown victims.”
In court Thursday, defense attorneys raised doubts about the strength of the evidence in their clients’ cases and questioned the charges prosecutors filed against them. Several of the lawyers took issue with their clients facing charges for inciting a riot, describing the timeline of when shots broke out and who fired first as murky at best.
“The riot count is the state’s attorney’s response to the Baltimore Police Department’s failure that day,” said attorney John Cox, who is representing the 16-year-old.
Cox was referring to city authorities’ admission that they neglected to intervene early in the event, despite reports of armed people and violence, and were slow to respond when gunfire erupted.
In addition to inciting a riot, his client is charged with attempted murder. Police arrested him Aug. 30, confiscating a Smith & Wesson SW99 handgun from him, according a recent court filing from prosecutors. That gun, they wrote, was “consistent with” having fired six .40 caliber casings left in the 800 block of Gretna Court, where the shooting started.
But, Cox said, no video or witness “has my client with a gun that evening, firing a gun.”
His client and the 15-year-old, who was 14 at the time, arrived that night with Brown and Jackson in a silver sedan, according to a court filing by prosecutors. Detectives identified them from the clothes they were wearing, such as “a dark blue jacket with reflective strips” and pants “with a large tag on the back-right pocket” and “distinct yellow and black shoes.”
Assistant Public Defender Amanda Savage, who is representing Jackson, noted in court Thursday that the CCTV footage from the public housing community did not have color.
Savage called prosecutors’ description of the evidence “a complete mischaracterization.”
Investigators followed the group’s movement throughout the crowd by reviewing the video footage, watching as celebration turned to chaos around 12:30 a.m., when “an initial shooting occurred within the large crowd gathered around the stair area of the 800 (block) of Gretna Ct.,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.
Nineteen cartridge casings found in the “stair area” were “consistent with” having been fired by guns police eventually took from three defendants. In court, Dunty pointed out that Gonzalez was gunned down on the stairs in that part of the public housing community.
Brown was shooting at a group of people who were shooting at him, according to prosecutors’ filing. When he was shot in the hand, the filing says, Brown handed the gun to Jackson, who fired approximately five rounds in the direction of seven people.
Police arrested Brown about a month after the shooting at the Brooklyn Homes on a warrant for attempted murder charges stemming from a separate, May 19 shooting. Brown allegedly waived his Miranda rights and told detectives he participated in the Brooklyn shooting, according to charging documents and prosecutors’ filing.
After they arrested him, police searched Brown’s home and found a Glock 17 9×19 handgun loaded with an extended magazine, according to prosecutors’ filing. That gun, prosecutors wrote, was “consistent with” having fired casings recovered from two locations in the public housing community and with casings collected as evidence in the May 19 shooting.
Brown’s attorney, Roya Hanna, argued that guns change hands frequently in Baltimore. She said a police firearms report indicated the Glock 17 recovered from her client had been used in eight other shootings in the year before the one in Brooklyn, only one of which Brown was charged in.
Police claimed to have identified Brown from video of the Brooklyn Day celebration because a detective recognized him in footage of the May 19 shooting. Hanna doubts that.
“You can absolutely not identify Mr. Brown from that video,” she said.
Hanna added that Brown intended to claim self-defense in the Brooklyn shootings.
Geller ordered Brown’s cases stemming from the May 19 and July 2 shootings tried alongside Jackson’s case.
Officers arrested the 15-year-old on July 27 on a juvenile gun charge, taking a Glock 17 pistol from him, according to prosecutors’ filing. That gun, they wrote, was “consistent with” having fired 13 9mm casings left “at the lower stair area” in the 800 block of Gretna Court.
Dunty said the teen tried to run away from police and that, as officers apprehended him, the gun nearly fell out of a hole in the knee area of his jeans. According to prosecutors’ filing, when the 15-year-old was arrested, he was wearing the same distinctive shoes investigators saw in the footage from Brooklyn homes, helping them to arrive at the conclusion that he was one of the shooters.
In court, defense attorney Warren Brown described the sneakers as common, calling the evidence against the 15-year-old “very sketchy.”
“The photo and the video footage they speak of, you really have to have your mind made up of what you want to see to walk away with that conclusion,” Brown added after court. “That might be symbolic of the state’s case: It’s close, but it’s murky, it’s not clear before they should ask for a guilty verdict.”