Jury finds Baltimore security guard not guilty on all counts in murder trial

A Baltimore jury found security guard Kevin Luckey not guilty Friday on all counts related to his fatal shooting last year of a customer during a dispute outside a Southeast Baltimore bar.

At trial, defense attorney Lawrence Rosenberg said Luckey was defending himself from 35-year-old Kevin Abel Torres Guerrero, who threw a piece of brick at Luckey and grabbed another before Luckey opened fire.

Prosecutors alleged Luckey reacted in anger in shooting Torres and failed in his duty to retreat from a violent confrontation.

Luckey had been charged with second-degree murder, reckless endangerment and use of a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence and use of an extended magazine in a felony. The charges all stemmed from the fatal shooting outside the Chris T Bar in Highlandtown around 1:30 a.m. Nov. 7, 2022.

The jurors began deliberating about 1 p.m. Friday after about two days of testimony and argument.

The dispute between Torres and the guards began inside the Highlandtown bar, where Torres’ group was involved in two altercations with other patrons. Torres was there with a large contingent of family and friends celebrating the league championship of the soccer team he coached. Fights broke out over a woman’s cellphone and Torres’ wife’s necklace.

“It was chaos inside,” said Tates, testifying as a defense witness.

At one point, the guards grabbed Torres’ then 18-year-old stepdaughter, security video played at the trial showed. Torres responded by grabbing Tates. Luckey took out his baton and pulled Torres off Tates. They argued for approximately five minutes before Torres and company left the bar.

During tense testimony, sitting only a few feet from the man who killed her husband, Sor Torres said she and Torres were enraged by the way the guards handled her daughter, describing their actions as “insane.”

Security camera footage from an auto body shop across from the bar captured the fateful moments outside. It showed Torres and his nephew walking toward the guards, who were standing at the entrance. Luckey pepper sprayed them while they were several feet away.

After being sprayed, Torres reached down for a piece of debris from a crumbling brick wall and hurled it toward Luckey and Tates, who dodged the object.

Luckey backed up toward Lombard Street to avoid the brick, but then advanced toward Torres with his gun drawn. When Torres reached down for another brick, Luckey opened fire. Luckey fell backward while he shot Torres. About a dozen people were around Torres.

After the shooting, Sor Torres spearheaded “Justice for Kevin” in their largely Latino community in Southeast Baltimore.

After Luckey’s history of violence toward people on the job became known, lawmakers vowed to bolster regulations on the loosely regulated field of private security.

In Maryland, guards were required to have a license to carry a gun, but there were no training requirements for working in private security. Only about half of those working as guards had to be licensed with the state, and the state didn’t keep track of when those who were licensed used force against people on the job. Come next June, much of that is set to change under a new law enacted in the aftermath of Torres’ and others’ deaths at the hands of guards.

Jurors in Luckey’s murder case did not hear about the previous times he used force, including when he fatally shot a man outside a Windsor Mill bar in 2019, which prosecutors deemed justified, or used a stun gun on a woman in a wheelchair at a pharmacy.

Luckey chose not to testify, protecting himself from questions about his past from the prosecutor.

In court, the trial came down to whether the jury believes he was justified to shoot Torres, in which case they are supposed to find him not guilty of murder, or that the circumstances of the fast-paced encounter mitigated the crime, in which case they were instructed to find him guilty of voluntary manslaughter.

Second-degree murder carries a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison, whereas manslaughter tops out at 10 years.

To find that Luckey acted in self-defense, the jury has to find that Luckey believed he was in imminent danger, that the belief was reasonable and that he used no more force than necessary to defend himself. The jury also has to consider whether Luckey complied with his legal obligation to retreat before opening fire and, if he didn’t, whether something prevented him from doing so.

Luckey gave a statement at the police homicide unit after the shooting. He never said he was afraid.

“He had a brick,” Luckey told detectives. “He threw one at me. Then he picked up a bigger one … And based on my knowledge, training and experience, I know it to be a weapon that can cause grievous bodily harm or death, so at that point, I took out my weapon and fired and he was hit.”

Luckey declined to answer detectives’ questions after his brief account of what happened.

In Maryland, when people are faced with a threat in public, they are required to try to escape before resorting to violence. It’s known as the duty to retreat. People are allowed to defend themselves so long as the force is considered reasonable and that they were not the initial aggressor. To use deadly force, the person raising self-defense has to establish that their attacker was using deadly force or that they believed their life was in danger.

Assistant State’s Attorney Matt Pillion said in court that Luckey could have either retreated into the bar, or escaped into the street, where there was no traffic. Instead, Luckey adopted the attitude of “throw another brick and see what happens,” Pillion argued, and engaged in an “impulsive act of anger.”

Luckey fired six shots at Torres. Three rounds struck Torres, with bullets tearing into his neck, abdomen and arm.

Pillon cited police body camera footage that showed Tate speaking with Luckey after the shooting.

“He got you mad. He shouldn’t of got you mad,” Tates said.

According to Pillion, Luckey was “so angry that he didn’t give one iota of concern for those people standing next to Mr. Torres.”

In closing, Pillion said Luckey was “essentially someone playing dress up,” or masquerading as a police officer, and that he had a sense of entitlement to kill because of his uniform. That night, Luckey wore a bulletproof vest emblazoned with the word “OFFICER” and carried a 9 mm handgun, two extra extended magazines, two canisters of pepper spray, a baton and a Taser.

“It’s not self-defense,” Pillion told the jury. “In fact, the defendant was not defending any part of himself, except maybe his pride. And that’s not justification for murder.”

Rosenberg defended his client’s actions.

“He is an armed security guard hired by the owner of Chris T bar,” Rosenberg told the jury. “It’s his job to keep decorum.”