Daaon Spears: Man in court in mass shooting at Edmondson Village mall

With a billboard behind him containing several autopsy photos, Maryland Deputy Medical Examiner Edernst Noncent answered questions from an assistant district attorney about the aftermath of a mass shooting at the Edmondson Village Shopping Center in Baltimore that killed a high school student and injured four others became .

“How many gunshot wounds did the victim suffer?” she asked.

“Sixteen,” he replied.

The cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds, he said. The manner of death was murder.

Noncent testified Thursday in Baltimore Circuit Court as the trial began for Daaon Spears, who is accused of being one of two gunmen who opened fire on a crowd outside the Popeyes at the Edmondson Village Shopping Center on Jan. 4, 2023 opened and killed Deanta Dorsey. a sophomore at Edmondson-Westside High School. He was 16.

Spears, 18, of Edmondson Village, is charged with first-degree murder and related offenses. He was 16 at the time.

District Judge Robert K. Taylor Jr. is presiding over the trial, which continues Friday.

In her opening statement, Assistant District Attorney Rita Wisthoff-Ito said Spears and another man, Bryan Johnson, went to the mall and opened fire.

Johnson, 18, of Shipley Hill, is charged with first-degree murder and related offenses. He was 16 at the time.

Wisthoff-Ito described the case as circumstantial. However, she noted that circumstantial evidence carried the same weight as direct evidence.

She plans to introduce surveillance video that she says shows Spears and Johnson going to the mall and running away after the shooting.

Although jurors can’t read minds, Wisthoff-Ito said, they could intervene through his actions in wanting to kill Spears. She did not give a motive for the shooting.

“Fortunately for this defendant, we are not here for five murders,” Wisthoff-Ito said.

But Brandon Taylor, Spears’ attorney, said prosecutors were pointing the finger at the wrong person.

Spears “was not involved in this tragic incident,” he said.

“These students deserve justice,” Taylor said in his opening statement.

“But condemning an innocent child,” he added, “is not justice.”

Earlier this week, Thiru Vignarajah, an attorney for the Dorsey family, held a news conference outside the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse and told reporters that relatives had “waited a long time for justice.”

Dorsey was a loving and quiet child who enjoyed playing basketball and video games and eating cereal with milk, according to his obituary. He was affectionately called “Dink.”

Vignarajah called the start of the trial “an important chapter for this family as they seek some measure of justice, some measure of comfort, some measure of closure.”

“The family is here to remind the world that their son has not been forgotten – that there is a hole in their hearts that no courtroom can fill,” Vignarajah said. “But that they hope and pray that some measure of justice will be achieved in the days ahead.”