A 21-year-old Baltimore man was sentenced Monday to two life sentences plus 200 years in prison for his role in a brief but violent 2019 crime spree that culminated with the fatal shootings of a man and woman in the city.
Baltimore Circuit Judge Videtta Brown handed down the maximum punishment for Kiray Walker’s crimes, ordering that the prison term for each offense he was convicted of run consecutively — and that his sentence for the city cases only begin after he’s finished serving time in a related Baltimore County case.
“He intends to file an appeal and pursue whatever other post-trial rights are available to him,” Walker’s defense attorney, Catherine Flynn, said after sentencing. She declined to comment further.
A city jury last month found Walker guilty of two counts each of second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, additionally determining that he conspired to commit armed robberies, assaults and carjackings. The jury in Walker’s case convicted him on 16 of 28 counts.
His sentence followed a string of convictions stemming from a crime spree carried out by a trio of young men between the city and county over about five hours in the early morning of Nov. 14, 2019. Police apprehended the teenagers the same day, after they crashed a pair of stolen cars during a brief pursuit in Landsdowne. Eventually, investigators were able to connect the teens to a double homicide in Carrollton Ridge.
The killings of 22-year-old Ayranna James and 21-year-old Courtney Richardson pushed Baltimore past 300 homicides that year.
Malik Brooks, 22, was convicted on all counts at a trial that began after Walker’s concluded. Devon Bynum, 19, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder.
At Walker’s trial, several men who were robbed, assaulted or carjacked testified about their frightening encounters with masked assailants. All recounted three males approaching them swiftly and holding them up at gunpoint. The trio stole two cars and several cellphones.
Prosecutors seized on Walker’s admission to Baltimore County carjacking detectives that the gun recovered from him at the time of his arrest was his and that nobody else had wielded it during the crime spree.
A firearms examiner testified that shell casings test fired from the Taurus handgun taken from Walker matched the 9mm casings recovered beside the tattoo parlor in the 1900 block of McHenry Street — where Richardson and James were shot dead.
Breaking News Alerts
In addition to the 9mm rounds found on scene, investigators found .40 caliber casings. Prosecutors said that proved there were two shooters.
While video of the shooting played during Walker’s trial, Baltimore homicide detective Kimberly Tonsch pointed out a two-tone jacket she said resembled the coat Brooks was arrested in. Tonsch testified that she thought Brooks’ movements, depicted in the footage of the double shooting, indicated that he fired a gun.
City surveillance cameras showed a gray Honda with a sunroof park on Wilhelm Street, at the mouth of Goldsmith Alley. Three masked people got out and walked into the alley, where a group of people were gathered on the other side. As the assailants emerged on the McHenry Street side of the alley, two of them with their arms extended, the group scattered. Two people collapsed to the ground.
A trio of masked men stole a gray Honda Civic with an automatic sunroof from a man in Baltimore about an hour before the fatal shootings. That was the vehicle Walker and Brooks bailed out of after the police chase in Baltimore County.
Brooks faces life in prison at sentencing in October after being found guilty of premeditated murder. Bynum, who was 16 at the time of the offenses, got 20 years in prison after pleading guilty.
Walker’s sentence Monday was his second from the cross-county spate of crimes: A county jury found him guilty of dozens of charges in 2021 and a judge there sentenced him to 30 years in prison.
Brooks pleaded guilty in Baltimore County to armed robbery and use of a firearm in the commission of a violent felony. He got 15 years in prison.