Last teen charged in Baltimore’s Brooklyn Homes mass shooting rejects plea deal, likely headed to trial

BALTIMORE — The last of five teens charged in the mass shooting at the Brooklyn Homes last summer has rejected plea offers and appears poised to head to trial.

Tristan Biran Jackson, 19, is charged with seven counts each of attempted first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit, as well as firearms offenses and inciting a riot.

“There’s been no reasonable counter offer to the state’s original plea,” Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Dunty told Circuit Judge Jeffrey M. Geller Monday, adding that the deadline he placed on the plea offer expired.

Geller set a scheduling conference for July 25 to set future motions hearings and a trial date in the case, with Jackson’s public defender preparing to leave the office and the case having to be assigned to a new attorney.

In court Monday, Geller also rejected a request from Jackson’s attorneys to release him on 24-hour home detention, citing a potential risk to public safety while acknowledging the defense’s concerns that he wasn’t receiving adequate medical treatment after being stabbed several times while in jail June 6.

Four other teens charged in connection to the midnight shootout July 2, 2023 have pleaded guilty to varying roles, with one admitting to a firearms offense, two to assault and another to conspiracy to commit murder. Sentences ranged from one to 12 years behind bars, though the minors convicted are not expected to serve time in adult prison.

Earlier this month, Baltimore marked the somber milestone of the one-year anniversary of the shooting, which has been described as the highest casualty shooting ever in a city plagued by violence. Thirty people — most of them young — were shot, two fatally, when gunfire erupted, transforming what began as an annual Brooklyn Day celebration into chaos and terror.

Nobody has been charged in the fatal shootings of 18-year-old Aaliyah Gonzalez and 20-year-old Kylis Fagbemi.

After being stabbed the day before, Jackson was not transported to court for the last hearing in the case, June 7. The attorneys and judge didn’t know he’d been stabbed and taken to a hospital, public defender Amanda Savage said.

Savage, the attorney who is leaving the public defender’s office, said Jackson was attacked while lying in bed and suffered injuries to various body parts, including his right eye, which required emergency surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Savage said doctors do not know whether Jackson will ever see again out of his right eye, which appeared to be swollen shut in court Monday.

“It’s our belief, your honor, that he is being targeted,” Savage told Geller, adding that the state has an obligation to protect him while he is presumed innocent pending trial. “He’s not being kept safe.”

The public defender also said the jail has failed to take Jackson to follow-up appointments with his eye doctors and has been inconsistent in giving him prescribed medications.

Dunty urged Geller to deny the request, saying he had reviewed several of Jackson’s jail calls, in which he said he had sought out fights behind bars.

The prosecutor also highlighted the seriousness of Jackson’s charges and noted that he was on GPS monitoring from an unrelated juvenile gun case at the time of the shooting at the Brooklyn Homes.

“Mr. Jackson is allegedly seen on video shooting in the direction of seven individuals,” Dunty said.

Savage disputed the state’s evidence against her client and said she had filed a motion to dismiss several counts in the case reflective of “overcharging” by prosecutors.

“Our position is that the video they mention does not show what they allege,” Savage said.

Saying he was concerned for public safety, Geller denied the defense’s request to release Jackson on home detention, but said he would write an order mandating the jail give him medications as prescribed and take him to doctors appointments.

During each plea hearing to date, prosecutors emphasized that the agreements do not preclude them from bringing additional charges against the teens if new evidence linked them to the homicides. Defense attorneys involved in the case, however, have expressed skepticism that authorities will ever be able to charge anyone with murder in the fatal shootings.

The state’s case relies largely on what defense attorneys have described as grainy, black-and-white CCTV footage of the chaotic events. The prosecutions also were bolstered by ballistics evidence.

Prosecutors wrote in court papers that the footage shows Jackson and Aaron Brown, a 19-year-old who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, arriving at the party with two of the minors charged in a silver sedan. A GPS ankle monitor Jackson was wearing as part of an unrelated case also placed him at the scene.

The Baltimore Sun does not name minors charged with crimes.

Detectives who scoured security camera video attested in court papers that they could identify the teens by their distinctive clothing. In charging papers, investigators described the group’s movements throughout the public housing community.

An “initial shooting” around 12:30 a.m. in a central stair area of the housing community spawned further gunfire, according to a filing from prosecutors, who originally sought to prosecute all five teens together in one trial. A judge rejected the state’s request, ordering the cases split into three trials, before four pleaded guilty, leaving only Jackson’s case outstanding.

Police officials have said they recovered evidence suggesting that at least 12 different guns were fired during the chaos.

Nineteen spent cartridge casings picked up from the “stair area” likely were fired by guns later recovered from Brown and the two minors who came with him, prosecutors said.

Police arrested Brown about a month after the mass shooting on a warrant for attempted murder charges stemming from a separate shooting on May 19. Brown allegedly waived his Miranda rights and told detectives he participated in the Brooklyn shooting, and that he was shot in the hand, according to charging documents and prosecutors’ filing.

“He admitted to firing a handgun into the roadway at approximately three individuals who were standing in the parking lot shooting at him,” prosecutors wrote. “Aaron Brown stated that he was shot in the hand while firing his weapon. Video shows that after suffering a gunshot wound to his hand, Aaron Brown fled towards 8th Street and Stoll St. … where Tristan Jackson fires the handgun numerous times.”

Detectives searched Brown’s home after they arrested him and found a Glock 17 9×19 handgun loaded with an extended magazine, according to prosecutors’ filing. That gun, prosecutors wrote, was “consistent with” having fired casings recovered from two locations in the public housing community and with casings collected as evidence in the May 19 shooting.

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