Homicide Defendant Gets Life For Gunning Down Family Friend

Thank you for reading Baltimore Witness. Help us continue our mission into 2024.

Before she even reached the prosecutor’s table, the mother of 24-year-old Dominik Carr unleashed a whirlwind of emotion on her son’s killer, who sat nearby awaiting his sentencing on Dec. 2.

“You come in here, smirking in the courtroom. You’re so monstrous,” the victim’s mother yelled at defendant Steven Melton. “I have a hole in my heart that will never be filled.”

Melton was found guilty of Carr’s murder on Sept. 30 after a four-day jury trial.

According to the mother’s impact statement, Melton, Carr, and their families knew each other prior to the fatal shooting, even celebrating holidays together. That was until April 5, 2021, when Melton stood at the bottom of the steps outside Carr’s family’s apartment on the 2800 block of Edgecombe Circle and shot him ten times.

On Friday, the prosecution asked Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Cynthia Jones to impose a sentence of life plus 20 years and the first five years without parole.

“We were like a little family,” the mother of Carr’s children said to Melton during her impact statement. “One of my sons was led out of the courtroom because [the court states] he was too young to be in here. He’s too young to grow up without a father. That’s what he’s too young for.”

Defense attorney Michael Cooper later addressed the court, saying that his client and Carr had had an altercation in the past when the victim allegedly pulled a gun on the defendant.

“Who pulled a gun first [this time]?” said Cooper, who noted that there were no witnesses to the shooting. He also acknowledged that Melton continues to show no remorse for his actions because his client says he did not commit the crime.

The defense attorney concluded by recommending a sentence of life, suspending all but 25 years.

While addressing the judge and those in the gallery, Melton insisted that his conviction was based on “speculation and assumption,” specifically the location of a cell phone that allegedly did not belong to him, as well as an individual’s description of the shooter wearing a blue hoodie.

This description strictly focused on the blue hoodie, Melton said but did not include the individual’s height, weight, or facial recognition. For these reasons, he added, the case should have been acquitted.

Melton’s sister and a close friend also addressed Judge Jones on Friday, asking for “some type of leniency” and pleading that the judge think about both parties when making her ruling.

Judge Jones agreed with the prosecution’s recommendation and imposed a sentence of life for first-degree murder and a consecutive 20 years, the first five years without parole, for firearm use in a felony violent crime.