Senior living facility killing in Montgomery County was a month in the making, authorities say

It is a complicated case, and it’s hard to explain in a basic news story. I did a timeline on this today, to try and explain it in a better way, but very basically, police found surveillance video of Maurquise James coming and going from a side door at the Cogir facility at about a little after 5 o’clock in the morning on Valentine’s Day.

Then they found Mr. Fuller shot in the head in his bed at 7:34 that morning. They then interviewed folks, and they learned that Maurquise James had been going into that room and handing out medication to Mr. Fuller and his roommate.

Police questioned James, but nothing happened at that point. But as the investigation went on, the police found video of a suspect that was wearing, we now know, according to police, a wig and a mask, and they put that out to the public.

Well, there were some employees at Cogir who thought that they had recognized that person — the way that person walked, and the coat that that person was wearing. And so the police were called, and this witness said, “Hey, this appears to be Maurquise James.”

He then continued to come to work. And here’s the odd part of the story, is that on Feb. 23 after his shift, he showed up at the facility. And the staff became very suspicious of that, and they questioned him and challenged him. As he was being challenged, then he decided to leave the facility. Then, they discover that a side door had been propped open and the battery had been tampered with.

At that point, the staff called the police, and then it was the next day, 3 o’clock in the morning, that police say that Maurquise James had shot at that trooper.

You’re right, Anne, it is a lot of moving parts. It can be confusing, but basically, that’s how the police pieced this together.

They have no motive at this point. In fact, yesterday, Capt. Sean Gagan said we’re going to dig into this. We’re going to find out what happened here.

And they’re going to go through his social media. They’re going to look at his computer, if he has one, and look at his searches to see if they could find anything. They’ll investigate his phone to try and find the motive.

As they said today in court, they believe he had been planning this for about a month. And then, of course, with what happened the other night at Cogir, where the staffers found a side door propped open, just like they had found it on Valentine’s Day, there was a suspicion that perhaps they had stopped another crime from happening.

So it’s an odd series of events. And one other note today, when the judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation for Mr. James, James said, “Good, I’m looking forward to speaking with the doctors.”

Well, News 4 has obtained some internal releases or emails that went out to people that lived in the facility. And in these emails, Cogir kept telling them that this was an isolated incident and that there was no ongoing threat.

I sent an email today, I sent an email yesterday, and we’ve gotten no response. So right now, they’re not responding at all to what has happened.

Well, we’ll want to see what the psychiatric evaluation comes back to, because once he speaks with the doctors, they’ll have to report in court what was discovered. We may find out that these doctors either view him as being competent or incompetent. So it’s going to be interesting to hear what they have to say.

That’s a very personal crime, police might call it. Just like when there’s a very close stabbing or a fight where someone is very, very badly injured. Police call that a personal crime.

Today they called it a cold-blooded murder, but to shoot an elderly man in the head while he’s in bed — that’s just brutal. And the police are going to dig into this and try and find out why.

He is being charged in Baltimore for that case, and so more than likely his murder case will stay here in Montgomery County, and it will be taken care of, and then his Baltimore case would be taken care of, because typically the most serious case gets handled first.

So the judge did tell him today that he’s being charged with attempted first-degree murder of that trooper, but that case will have to be handled in Baltimore at some other time.