The murder trial of Tyler Liggins, 30, for allegedly conspiring to kidnap and kill Travon Booth, 43, continued on Oct. 29, before Judge Jeanine Hong in Baltimore City Circuit Court.
Liggins stands accused of co-conspiring with David Whitfield, 29, his foster-brother, to kidnap and kill the victim after a fight broke out on the 1100 Block of West Northern Parkway. The defendant worked alongside his co-conspirator to allegedly carry the victim into the backseat of the victim’s black Nissan Altima, where Whitfield then got into the car and drove off. The defendants are being tried separately
The victim was discovered after the co-conspirator got into an accident while trying to make a sharp right turn northbound on I-83 located in Baltimore County.
After a brief but intense summer storm, an eyewitness allegedly saw the Nissan speed past him and his family and crash on the slippery highway. The car flipped over multiple times as it crashed and the victim was ejected from the backseat.
The witness testified that after calling out to the driver who was limping away, they saw the victim lying face down in the middle of the highway. He testified that the victim did not appear to be conscious and was only breathing irregularly.
With the help of the eyewitness and surveillance footage the defendant was arrested and taken to Baltimore Police Department’s Homicide Division.
The defendant told police that he had gotten into an altercation with the victim after finding his foster-brother and the victim in an argument outside of an apartment building. He claimed that he overheard the victim threaten to “stab” his brother, and then the two of them engaged in a fight and knocked the defendant out, but claimed that he was still breathing.
The defendant then claimed that he returned upstairs to his apartment building to see his girlfriend when the victim allegedly followed him into his unlocked apartment and refused to leave. The defendant claimed a second fight broke out which quickly ended after knocking the victim unconscious again.
He allegedly said, “Once I realized he was unconscious, we stopped,” and then claimed to “escort” the victim out of the building. He admitted that he and his foster-brother carried the victim to his car, but claimed that he immediately returned to his apartment and did not know what his foster brother did next, repeating “I didn’t know he drove off.”
He swore to the homicide detectives that “the last time I saw him [the victim], he was alive,” and that “his chest was rising and falling.” He claimed that he knew for a fact that he returned to his apartment for good at 6:22 a.m. because that was when his girlfriend was breastfeeding their child, a routine which she tracked and recorded.
Seemingly out of context, he consistently used his military background as an excuse for his uncooperativeness, claiming that he could not give up the passcode to his cellphone due to “military things” investigators couldn’t access. He also claimed that while he was trained in first-aid, he was barred from rendering assistance to the victim because he was not allowed to perform “military first aid on the “civilian side.”
After the end of the interrogation footage, the prosecutor presented video evidence which appeared to contradict the defendant’s narrative.. It showed an individual pulling the victim’s Nissan Altima around the side of the apartment at 6:19 a.m..
Another video captured two individuals, allegedly the defendant and his co-conspirator, moving what appears to be a body into the backseat of the same car at around 6:38 a.m.. The car quickly sped off before it crashed on the highway at 6:42 a.m..
On cross-examination, defense counsel Jason Miles was able to get the detective to admit that he could not actually see a body being carried, even though the detective insisted that the actions of the two were “consistent with [carrying] a body.”
Miles also was able to establish that while he suspected the victim may have been killed before the accident, that the medical examiner stated it was “difficult” to determine whether the victim died before or after the accident.
A full day of testimony is expected on Oct 30.
