BALTIMORE – The trial of a teen charged in the January 2023 fatal shooting of 16-year-old Deanta Dorsey at the Edmondson Village Shopping Center is set to begin Thursday.
Daaon Spears is one of two people charged with murder in Dorsey’s slaying. He and Bryan Damari Johnson, both 18, also face four counts of conspiracy to commit murder and attempted first-degree murder, with authorities alleging the bullets they fired injured four other people in addition to Dorsey.
Attorneys on Tuesday finished selecting a jury to decide the case of Spears, who was arrested in February 2023. Johnson, who was charged in July, is scheduled to appear in court in December. The defendants were both 16 years old at the time of the shooting, which has shocked students and teachers at nearby Edmondson-Westside High School, where Dorsey studied, but they are being tried as adults.
Dorsey’s relatives have waited nearly two grueling years for the trial of one of the alleged shooters after learning “that their beloved son and nephew had been murdered during their lunch break,” Thiru Vignarajah, an attorney for Dorsey’s family, said Tuesday to reporters.
“He was loved not only by this family, but by everyone at his school and in his community,” Vignarajah said. ‘He was smart. He was attentive. He was a wonderful son. He was a great sibling. He was a good friend. This family undergoes the unimaginable. … The idea that he could go to lunch at the Edmondson Village Shopping Center across the street and not come home is unimaginable.”
Spears’ attorney, Brandon T. Taylor, urged observers to pay attention to the evidence in the case.
“Convicting an innocent man is not justice for anyone,” Taylor said before the trial.
Johnson did not list an attorney in online court records.
Police officers summoned homicide detectives to the area outside the Popeyes at the mall around noon on Jan. 4, 2023, after finding a chaotic scene where as many as five people were lying on the ground, “suffering from apparent gunshot wounds,” investigators wrote in charging documents for Spears.
Dorsey did not respond, the documents say. Medics took him to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he died the same day.
One of the other victims was shot in the right thigh, according to charging documents. Another suffered gunshot wounds to his back and leg. One was shot in the ankle. A bullet grazed a fourth in the back. All were taken to Shock Trauma or Sinai Hospital.
While they were being treated, police examined the crime scene, with crime lab technicians picking up 9mm cartridge casings and detectives searching for video footage.
Footage recovered by police shows Spears entering his Edmondson Avenue home before the shooting, “meeting with the second shooter” and walking to the scene, where “both used handguns to shoot Dorsey and the other victims to shoot,” according to charging documents. Spears allegedly fled on foot on Colborne Road.
Witnesses “reviewed video and/or photos from the video and identified one of the shooters as Daaon Spears,” detectives wrote.
Investigators armed with a search warrant searched Spears’ home more than a month after the shooting and found from his room “clothing consistent with that seen on video,” along with a Taurus Millennium PT-111 Pro 9mm pistol loaded with one round in the chamber and 28 rounds. in the attached magazine, according to charging documents.
Magazines that hold more than ten rounds are considered high-capacity magazines in Maryland, and state law says it is illegal to buy and sell them or use them in a felony or violent crime, but not to use one to possess. Spears faces several firearms charges but is not charged with using an extended magazine.
Charging documents say Spears was prohibited by law from having a gun not only because he was under 21, but also because he had been convicted in juvenile court of a disqualifying crime. Juvenile court records are confidential in Maryland and it is unclear what Spears was convicted of as a juvenile.
Detectives wrote in charging documents for Johnson that they identified him as a “person of interest” in the shootings after reviewing “a significant amount of video footage.” On June 24, investigators conducted a DNA test on Johnson at the Washington County Detention Center.
They compared his sample to that of “an item of evidentiary value” that was “dropped by one of the unidentified suspects,” according to charging documents. Detectives said DNA analysis revealed a match.
