GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A federal grand jury in Maryland has indicted a man accused of trying to arrange two killings as revenge for the death of a cousin.
Marquis Antwan Mack, 31, of Dover, Delaware, was charged Monday with using a telephone and interstate travel in a murder for hire. U.S. Magistrate Judge William Connelly ordered Mack held without bond after a judge found he’s a flight risk and poses a threat to the community.
Between Sept. 3 and Sept. 12, Mack met three times with a confidential informant and undercover officer in Queenstown and Centreville, Maryland, and at the Dover Downs Casino to pay $1,000 for two killings, according to an affidavit written by Jeremy Horbert, a special agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Horbert said the planned killings were in retaliation for the Aug. 24 shooting death in Dover of Mack’s cousin, 33-year-old Yusif Lamb of Montclair, New Jersey.
Authorities declined to pursue charges in Lamb’s death, finding that Shamarr Willingham, 32, shot Lamb once in the chest in self-defense after Lamb had pulled a gun on him during a dispute over a woman both had been dating. Police said Lamb and a group of people had confronted Willingham in front of his Dover home, and that people in the group shot at Willingham after he shot Lamb.
Police found Lamb dying on the ground with a handgun next to him.
Mack’s court-appointed federal defender, John Chamble, did not immediately answer a request for comment Tuesday.
In recorded phone conversations, Mack told an informant that he loved Lamb like a brother and needed to pay to have someone else kill Willingham and another man because everyone, including police, would know it was him, according to Horbert’s affidavit.
“I’m just mad as hell,” Mack said, according to the court document. “I really want to be the one going in but I got to be smart.”
If convicted, Mack faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.
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