The trial of 19 year-old Daaon Spears concluded with closing arguments before Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Lynn Stewart Mays on Feb 26.
Spears faces 31 charges in connection to a mass shooting incident that occurred outside a Popeyes restaurant in Edmondson Village Shopping Center over two years ago. The shooting, which occurred during the afternoon of Jan 4, 2023, left four students injured and resulted in the death of 16-year-old Deanta Dorsey.
Though Spears was previously tried in October 2024, proceedings ended in a mistrial after jurors failed to reach a unanimous verdict. His co-defendant, 19-year-old Bryan Johnson, has yet to be tried.
Prior to trial proceedings, defense attorney Brandon Taylor moved for acquittal, claiming the prosecution failed to meet its burden of proving Spears’ guilt. Judge Mays denied the motion.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor maintained that Spears’ guilt was upheld by footage from Ring home security cameras and CCTVs that captured one of the suspects’ movements around the time and scene of the shooting. Spears has a distinctive gait that matched the suspects’, she told jurors.
“No one has the right to take another life,” she said, adding that Dorsey, who had sustained 16 gunshot wounds, “was executed.”
Taylor called the prosecution’s evidence entirely circumstantial, pointing to a lack of forensic evidence or eyewitness accounts linking Spears to the shooting.
He denied the prosecution’s claims regarding video evidence, claiming its poor quality made it difficult to discern that his client was the suspect seen in the footage. The suspect had been wearing a face mask that obscured the majority of his features, Taylor added.
In rebuttal, the prosecution insisted on the legitimacy of the footage, urging jurors to “take all of the evidence and put it together like a puzzle.”
Jury deliberations are expected to continue to Feb. 27.
