A Baltimore City jury heard closing arguments on July 16 for Antonio Nance, 43, who chose to represent himself after dismissing former defense attorney, Augustine Okeke .
Nance is charged with attempted first-degree and second-degree murder, assault in the first-degree and multiple gun violations for allegedly shooting a fellow passenger who wasn’t injured on a Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) bus on the 2400 block of W. Franklin Street on Aug. 12, 2025.
During testimony, a Baltimore Police Department (BPD) detective said that Nance admitted he threw the gun into a gutter after the shooting, but officers were unable to recover it.
While representing himself, Nance repeatedly questioned the detective whether evidence recovered was bullet fragments or shell casings after the detective said multiple times that they were bullet fragments. Nance also argued that the gun was loaded with blanks, but the detective insisted it was loaded with bullets.
After the state rested, Judge Jeffrey M. Geller, acquitted Nance on the charge of possession of a firearm after a felony conviction due to the lack of evidence.
In closings, the prosecutor argued that physical evidence proved that there were bullets and not blanks in the gun and that Nance even admitted in police questioning that he could have walked away from the confrontation.
Nance told jurors that he was threatened by the victim and believed the victim had a gun, which caused Nance to pull out his son’s toy gun to try and scare the victim, not kill him. Nance argued that he never intended to harm anyone and that the victim didn’t suffer any injuries and even told responding officers, “nothing happened”.
In the state’s rebuttal, the prosecutor questioned why Nance discarded the gun if it was just a toy and done nothing wrong and argued that Nance’s own recorded statements showed he knew he could have handled the situation differently.
The case was then sent to the jury for deliberation.
