A 19-year-old from Baltimore has been convicted of murder in the fatal shooting of 27-year-old Desmond Gardner in January 2023.
In addition to first-degree murder, a city jury found Parris Harris — who was 17 at the time of the killing and prosecuted as an adult — guilty of using a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence and two other gun offenses, according to online court records.
The jury deliberated for about five hours following a three-day trial, rendering its verdict Friday, the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, which prosecuted the case, said in a news release.
Gardner was shot to death in during the day January 26, 2023, while on his way to visit his young daughter on his work lunch break, according to the attorney general’s office. He was gunned down by three hooded and masked assailants in the 3400 block of Spelman Road in Baltimore’s Cherry Hill neighborhood.
The attorney general’s office said Gardner, who was unarmed, was shot in the back, “just as he was about to enter an apartment building where his daughter was waiting for him.”
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement that the conviction reflects the commitment of his office’s Organized Crime Unit to prosecute gun violence.
“This was a young father whose life was struck down just steps away from seeing his daughter and now she is forced to grow up without him,” Brown said. “I can only hope that this verdict brings some solace to her and her family.”
Harris faces life in prison at sentencing Oct. 23 before retired Circuit Judge Timothy J. Doory.
Reached by phone, defense lawyer Roland S. Harris IV declined to comment on his client’s case, citing the pending sentencing hearing.
Baltimore County Police detectives investigating a stolen vehicle confiscated a gun from the glovebox of a car they saw Harris flee from six days after the shooting, prosecutors said. Firearms analysts compared cartridge casings collected when they test-fired the gun to those found at the scene of Gardner’s death, determining they were consistent with having been fired by the same weapon.
Several FBI agents testified in the case, including an expert who analyzed Harris’ cell phone records, according to the attorney general’s office. The expert’s analysis showed Harris’ phone moving from his home in West Baltimore toward Cherry Hill, before it went off the cellular network minutes before the fatal shooting.
In separate statements, Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley and William J. DelBagno, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office, touted the verdict as evidence of successful law enforcement partnership.
