BALTIMORE – A jury in Baltimore has awarded $4.1 million to the family of a man who was shot and killed by a security guard at a Royal Farms in southwest Baltimore in 2022.
In its verdict Tuesday, the jury found security guard Kanisha Spence and her employer, Maximum Protective Services Security Investigations, LLC, guilty of the wrongful death of 26-year-old Marchioness Powell.
“The jury found that not only did Ms. Spence wrongfully shoot and kill Marquise, but that Maximum failed to properly train her, failed to properly vet her background and should never have hired her or continued to employ her ,” attorneys Andrew O. ‘Connell, Malcolm Ruff, Ronald Richardson and Nikoletta Mendrinos, who represented Powell’s estate, said in a statement.
Spence shot Powell in the face in the vestibule of the Royal Farms during a verbal altercation in the early morning of Oct. 30, 2022. Powell died at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma six days after he was shot in the store, located in the 1800s. block of Washington Boulevard, in Baltimore’s Carroll Park neighborhood.
An attorney for Maximum Protective Services, reached by phone, declined to comment on the jury’s verdict. An attorney for Spence did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A separate jury in Baltimore in August found Spence guilty of second-degree murder and use of a firearm in a violent crime. A judge sentenced her in February to 60 years in prison, the maximum penalty. Online court records show Spence, 45, appealed her conviction.
Spence also entered an Alford plea — maintaining her innocence but acknowledging that the prosecution had sufficient evidence to secure a conviction — to making a false statement on an application to purchase a firearm and perjury for making a false statement on an application to law enforcement for a permit to carry the gun.
Powell was one of several people shot by security guards in Baltimore around the same time, prompting Maryland lawmakers last year to overhaul state oversight of the once sparsely regulated industry of private security. On June 1, a law went into effect that expanded the number of security guards in Maryland who must be licensed, trained and insured.
Previously, only security guards who worked for private security companies, like Spence, were required to be licensed by the Maryland State Police. Security guards who were directly employed by, for example, supermarkets and retailers did not have to apply for a permit. There were no training requirements for guards of any kind unless they registered to carry a handgun, a process that requires safety courses for anyone seeking such a permit.
On October 30, 2022, around 2:45 a.m., Powell, his sister and girlfriend stopped at the Royal Farms to buy some chicken and gas up their car after going to a bar following a family Halloween party. Powell and Spence got into an argument after Spence told his sister that the store’s bathroom was closed to customers.
As Powell’s argument with Spence continued, his girlfriend and sister intervened and pulled him out of the store. He wrestled them in the glass vestibule.
A photo included in the family’s wrongful death lawsuit shows Spence making a taunting gesture toward Powell.
The image was captured shortly before Spence pulled open the vestibule door, approached Powell and fired one shot, according to security footage played during Spence’s murder trial.
Powell immediately collapsed after being shot near his sister and girlfriend. In the background we heard Spence’s call to 911 reporting the shooting. This call was also played during her trial.
“I’m a security guard at Royal Farms,” Spence told the operator. “A man came to me. I carry a body camera. He threatened my life.”
As Spence calmly spoke to the 911 operator and expressed little concern for Powell, a Royal Farms employee applied pressure to his head wound.
The bullet Spence fired struck Powell in the mouth, lacerated his cerebral vertebrae and damaged the artery that supplies oxygen to the brain — causing his brain to stop functioning within a day — before lodging in the back of his neck, according to a medical examiner who testified at Spence’s murder trial.
During the trial, Spence claimed she acted in self-defense.
The wrongful death lawsuit alleged that Powell fathered a young daughter, a beloved brother and son.
“There is a lot wrong with our justice system, but at its core it is designed to deliver justice,” read the statement from the Powell family attorneys, who work at the firm Murphy, Falcon & Murphy. “We commend the members of the jury for ensuring that justice was served because the facts of this case called for it.”
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