Judge Postpones Jury Trial for Fairhaven Avenue Shooting Defendant

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

Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Melissa M. Phinn postponed a jury trial for a defendant charged with discharging a firearm on June 22.

The prosecutor assigned to the case offered defendant Richard Jerome Duckett, Jr. a plea of one year in prison for malicious destruction of property. He also would have had to pay $1,465 in restitution and stay away from the victim. Duckett rejected the offer.

Judge Phinn postponed the jury trial and rescheduled it to begin on July 17.

According to court documents, on March 20, officers responded to an alert on the 4400 block of Fairhaven Avenue for a shooting. Officers arrived on the scene and found shell casings in the street and a vehicle with bullet holes in its side.

The mother of the victim’s child and her boyfriend, later identified as Duckett, were in front of his home when the defendant pulled up to the curb in his vehicle and the child’s mother pulled up behind him. Duckett walked up to the driver’s side window of his girlfriend’s car and appeared to retrieve an unknown object from the vehicle. Duckett returned to his vehicle and then pulled away, allegedly shooting at the victim’s vehicle.

Body-worn camera footage captured the incident but did not reveal the identity of the shooter.

Duckett, 33, is charged with reckless endangerment, conspiracy to have a loaded handgun in a vehicle, having a loaded handgun in a vehicle, having a loaded handgun on his person, having a gun in a vehicle, having a gun on his person, malicious destruction of property worth up to $1,000 and discharging a firearm.