A 37-year-old Baltimore man is set to serve 50 years behind bars after pleading guilty to first-degree murder and firearm use in the death of Marvin G. Moore, 42, at McCulloh Homes in West Baltimore over one-and-a-half years ago.
Multiple members of Moore’s family attended the Jan. 12 sentencing hearing, including the victim’s adoptive mother and the mother of his 13-year-old son, both of whom delivered tearful impact statements before defendant Fred Q. Woods, Jr. and Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Kendra Y. Ausby.
“It’s hard. Even though Marvin wasn’t my biological child, everyone who knows me and Marvin [knows] that’s my child,” said Moore’s adoptive mother. “He was taken from us unnecessarily. It hurts. I’ll never be able to pick up my phone and hear him say, ‘Mother, what’s up?’ And it hurts because another Black person took him.”
Sounds of grief filled the gallery as Moore’s family addressed the court. Moore’s adoptive mother described how their son has been traumatized and acting out in anger since his father’s death. He had witnessed his father pass before his own eyes, she told Judge Ausby.
“He really impact our life,” she continued through sobs. “Our life is gone. He took away Marvin, and he took away us.”
Opposing counsel described how during the early morning hours of June 18, 2024, Woods chased Moore down onto the 1100 block of Stoddard Court, where he fired multiple gunshots into the victim’s body. CitiWatch and surveillance cameras in the area of McCulloh Homes captured the incident as it unfolded, allowing detectives to identify Woods as the perpetrator.
Following the shooting, Woods was captured fleeing through City View Apartments and discarding a grey T-shirt he had been wearing at the time of discharge. Investigators later recovered the shirt in an open dumpster and processed it for DNA, producing a 1.38 quadrillion likelihood match that the clothing belonged to Woods.
Further investigation revealed that Woods had been involved in a non-fatal shooting incident that occurred less than two months prior. Footage of the shooting was recovered, allowing detectives to match Woods’ appearance to that of the suspect in Moore’s death.
Woods’ family was absent from the hearing, including his mother, whom public defender Nicole Blaquiere said he “very much dissuaded” from appearing. Blaquiere called her client “a product of the violence in which he was raised” and a traumatized man who was forced to move out of Baltimore City and into the county at the age of 10 to avoid his “quite destructive” father.
Despite the defendant’s reportedly tumultuous upbringing and signs of developmental disabilities that left him attempting and repeatedly failing to pass ninth grade, Blaquiere said Woods was never afforded mental health treatment and asked Judge Ausby to refer him to the Patuxent Institution, a treatment-oriented maximum security correctional facility in Jessup, Maryland.
Blaquiere grew emotional as she told the court her client had repeatedly demonstrated remorse for his role in Moore’s death, though she acknowledged the revelation was “probably the hardest thing for the [victim’s] family to hear.”
“I would not let the court know Mr. Woods had remorse if he didn’t,” she said.
After weighing “the damage done to the victim’s family, particularly to his young son,” Judge Ausby accepted the state’s plea offer, agreeing to sentence Woods to life, suspending all but 50 years, and five years of supervised probation for the charge of first-degree murder.
Woods, who declined to address the court or Moore’s family, was also handed a concurrent 20-year sentence for using a firearm to carry out the murder, and will be required to register as a gun offender upon his release from jail.
“This family deserves some peace,” Judge Ausby concluded. “They deserve to be away from this whole situation for as long as Mr. Woods is incarcerated.”
