Five defendants charged with various crimes related to the Brooklyn Day mass shooting in July will not stand trial together after a judge rejected the state’s motion for full joinder.
Circuit Judge Jeffrey Geller instead partially granted the state’s request, ordering three trials for the five defendants.
Aaron Brown,18, and Tristan Jackson, 19, will be tried together — both are charged with seven counts of attempted first degree murder and charges of conspiracy to commit murder and firearm charges.
Two minors — also charged with attempted first degree murder and crimes related to firearms — will have another separate trial. They are 16 and 15 years old.
A third minor, 17, will stand trial separately for firearms and riot offenses. He is not charged with firing a weapon. His lawyer, Michael Clinkscale, maintains that the weapon in question, observed in an online social media post, is actually a toy.
In the early hours of July 2nd, just after midnight, gunfire rang out at the Brooklyn Day block party, an annual event held at the Brooklyn Homes public housing project. Two people, Aaliayh Gonzalez, 18, and Kylis Fagbemi, 19, were killed. Another 28 people, many of them teenagers, were injured by gunfire.
Investigators still do not know who fired the fatal shots at Gonzalez and Fagbemi. None of the defendants are charged with murder outright. In the weeks initially following the investigation, the Baltimore Police Department said they believed as many as 10 people were responsible for the carnage. Only five people have been arrested and charged so far and BPD has not returned WYPR’s request for a comment on the status of the investigation.
During a hearing that stretched upwards of two and a half hours, Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Dunty laid out reasons for why the five defendants should be tried together. Then, lawyers for each of the five defendants all argued individually for why their clients should not be tried in joinder.
“Much of the evidence is mutually admissible,” he said.
He argued that they all contributed to the “mass chaos” that took place that night. The state also claims that CCTV footage, combined with license plate readers, shows that all four defendants arrived at the party together. Dunty also argued that it made sense for the sake of “justice and economy” to hold a joint trial — it would save courtroom resources and allow justice to be served faster, he argued.
“In each case the state would have to present the same evidence,” said Dunty.
Defense Attorney John Cox represents a 16 year-old who faces riot and attempted murder charges. “I see nothing to suggest that my client arrived with the others,” said Cox, who also said no videos or witnesses identified his client firing a gun.
Warren Brown represents the 15-year-old defendant and pushed back against the “optics” of trying five young Black men at once.
“You put them all together… it's easy to just blend them all together [and think] that they are a gang,” said Brown speaking to reporters outside the courthouse while the hearing was in recess.
Defense attorneys all pushed back against the “riot charges'' pressed on their clients. Cox called those charges the result of the “state’s response to BPD’s failure to handle the event.”
After the shooting, BPD conducted an after action report that found police failed to intervene multiple times leading up to the shooting and cites a “pattern of officer indifference” as one of the primary reasons for that failure.
This report may be updated.
