A New Carrollton, Maryland, teenager was found guilty of murder and a long list of other charges this week in connection with the death of a man in a wheelchair who was making a marijuana delivery for a friend.
It happened July 1 outside of apartments along Good Luck Road in Lanham, not far from Duval High School. It was the same day recreational cannabis became legal in Maryland, and retail stores could begin selling. But prosecutors said 19-year-old Dane Gayle and some other friends didn’t have the money to buy any — even illegally. So, prosecutors said, they called up a dealer they knew with the intention of robbing him.
But making the delivery instead was a man named Malcolm Bradley, who was friends with the dealer and who used a wheelchair at the time. Bradley showed up that day with his girlfriend and two kids in the car with him.
“He just thought he was going to make a simple marijuana transaction and go back home,” said assistant state’s attorney Bill Porter. “But it took Dane Gayle four seconds to meet him. And in that four seconds, Dane Gayle pulled out a gun and he shot this individual 11 times and made 23 holes in his body. And you could see that he shot the person in his back as the person was turning away from Dane Gayle.”
Porter said surveillance video from the apartment showed that this was not a case of self-defense, which is what Gayle tried to argue.
“What was striking in that surveillance was that there was not just that marijuana dealer there. But in the Carleton Apartments, there were families, there were babies, there were children just walking back and forth. And they knew nothing about what was getting ready to take place,” Porter said. “And at that moment … they turned that apartment complex into a war zone with all these families just walking around.”
Porter said prosecutors were able to zoom in on the footage, which clearly shows “Dane Gayle literally turn around, pull out a gun and just start blasting.”
State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy said Gayle and others were part of a street crew that committed crimes in that area.
“It is a message to them,” Braveboy said, “that we are not accepting your behavior, that we have intelligence on the ground, that the police are making arrests and we are prosecuting you and we are getting convictions and really stiff sentences.”
Bradley’s mother, Edith, also spoke during a virtual news conference.
“I learned I have to forgive those young men,” she said. “If not, God won’t allow me to continue to live my life … I just don’t know what else — I don’t know how much more my heart can take this.”
Gayle will be sentenced at the end of May.
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