Judge Orders Motion to Transfer Defendant in 2021 Homicide of MTA Bus Driver

By Racquel Bazos - August 24, 2023
Court | Daily Stories | Homicides | Shooting | Suspects | Victims |

On Aug. 22, Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Anthony F. Vittoria postponed a 32-year-old defendant’s collateral hearing to allow the attorneys in the case time to write a joint motion to transfer his next hearing to Judge John A. Howard.

Ernest Ford, represented by Tony Garcia, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, use of a handgun in a felony violent crime and having a handgun in a vehicle on a public road in connection to the Jan. 29 killing of 49-year-old Frankye Duckett, a MTA bus driver. 

The attorneys thought a transfer to Judge Howard would be appropriate because he accepted Ford’s codefendant, Marquis Poteat’s, guilty plea in May.

Ford previously pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact in December 2022.

Ford’s next collateral hearing will be on Sept. 18 before Judge Vittoria.

According to a press release from the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office, on Jan. 29, 2021, Poteat got into an argument with the victim when he picked up Poteat’s grandmother from her home in the MTA MobilityLink bus. 

Later, on the 4400 block of Moravia Road, a beige Buick LeSabre, owned and driven by Ford, pulled next to the bus in a parking lot. Poteat shot into the driver’s side window of the bus, climbed in and continued to shoot the victim before fleeing the scene in the LeSabre.