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By
Sage Cho
- January 16, 2025
Court
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Daily Stories
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Homicides
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Shooting
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Suspects
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Victims
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On Jan. 15, counsel gave closing statements in 25-year-old Darrean Fleming’s homicide trial before Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Lynn S. Mays.
Fleming was charged with two counts of first-degree murder as well as one count each of having a handgun in his vehicle and using a firearm in a felony or violent crime.
He and his codefendants – 22-year-old Wesley Lambert and 24-year-old Garry Morris – were accused of murdering 20-year-old Amare Burruss in a drive-by shooting on Dec. 7, 2022. The trio was suspected to have chased Burruss from behind a Dollar General in the 4400 block of Park Heights Avenue to an abandoned residential area in the 4200 block of Pimlico Road, where police responders found Burruss deceased with a gunshot wound at the top of his head pointing downward.
“That is not the type of wound you would receive during a drive-by shooting, unless you’re a marksman,” said defense attorney Michael Tomko.
Footage from near the back of the Dollar General store captured Burruss firing multiple times from a 9mm extended gun at a man who was accompanying and seemingly friends with the trio.
“I suggest to you he had an intent to kill,” Tomko said about Burruss.
Following the gunfire near the Dollar General, Baltimore CitiWatch cameras and police body-worn cameras captured four individuals – whom detectives later identified as Fleming, Morris, Lambert and a friend – entering a gray Acura TL. The man presumed to be Fleming boarded the driver’s seat, Morris the passenger’s seat and Lambert entered the back of the vehicle. The fourth man remained outside as the vehicle drove away.
Tomko raised the possibility that the fourth man searched for and found Burruss hiding in the yard of the abandoned Pimlico Road rowhome and fatally shot him in the top of his head.
Video evidence also captured one of the passengers firing a gun while Fleming allegedly drove the car. The prosecution stressed that Fleming, who was not captured firing a gun, can still be found guilty of first-degree murder through accomplice liability laws because he aided and abetted the shooter by driving the car.
“Mr. Fleming made the murder possible,” said the prosecution. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”
Tomko told the jury that their decision should consider the lack of presented evidence and the detectives’ method of “backtracking” and piecing together evidence to identify the suspects.
He said that the state’s testifying officers chose to bolster their case by deciding not to present certain evidence, including a jacketed bullet recovered from Burruss’ body that did not match the firearms recovered during investigations. The previous 18-month period of stagnation in investigations also indicates the state’s lack of a case, he said.
During his closing statement, Tomko repeated the same phrase to the jury several times. “Don‘t mistake reaching for a simple solution for thinking that a simple guess will do,” he said.
The jury continues to deliberate.