A city police officer on foot patrol in a Northeast Baltimore shopping plaza spotted a man wanted in a double killing this month and stopped and arrested him, police said yesterday.
Officer Richard Hall, 24, who joined the department in May 2006, recognized the man in Northwood Shopping Center in the Hillen neighborhood, according to Agent Donny Moses, a police spokesman.
Moses said Hall knew the suspect from a photo distributed to officers by the Northeastern District's gang intelligence unit. The suspect was identified as 21-year-old Bagada I. Dionas, who last lived in the 5600 block of Moravia Road. Police said they were charging him with two counts of first-degree murder.
Police said the suspect was one of possibly four men who ambushed three other men on a parking lot at a Northeast Baltimore apartment complex July 15. One of the men fired an assault-style automatic weapon, and two people were killed. No other arrests have been made.
The victims were identified as Maurice G. White, 22, and Wayne G. White, 24. Police said the men are not related.
About two weeks before the killings, a Baltimore Circuit Court judge issued a warrant for Dionas' arrest because he had violated the terms of his probation for a 2004 armed robbery conviction, electronic court records show.
For that conviction, Dionas had been given an eight-year prison sentence, but five years were suspended, and he had been placed on five years of probation, the records show. It could not be determined from the court records how much time Bagada spent in prison.
As a juvenile, Dionas had been charged twice with serious offenses in adult court. When he was 14, Dionas was charged with first-degree rape in Baltimore County. When he was 16, Dionas was charged with armed robbery and assault, court records show.
Though Dionas was charged as an adult in both cases, their dispositions were not available. In the robbery case, a judge remanded him to juvenile court, where records are sealed.