Man to be sentenced in murder of Baltimore police officer Keona Holley, second victim – Baltimore Sun

A man is expected to be sentenced Tuesday for the 2021 killings of Baltimore police officer Keona Holley and a 27-year-old man shot to death in her car less than two hours after her.

Elliot Knox, 34, is the second person to be convicted for the murders of Holley and Justin Johnson, which a prosecutor described as “two executions, 90 minutes apart, [in] two different neighborhoods.

Baltimore prosecutors have long announced their intention to seek the sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for Knox, who was convicted in March.

After four days of trial and approximately two days of deliberation, a jury found Knox guilty of eight of nine counts in the Dec. 16, 2021, shooting, including two counts each of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. to commit murder.

Travon Shaw, 35, is serving a life sentence for both murders. He pleaded guilty to Holley's murder in late March, months after a jury found him guilty of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and firearms offenses in Johnson's killing. Online court records show Shaw appealed his conviction in the fatal shooting of Johnson.

Holley was sitting in her patrol car during an overtime shift in Baltimore's Curtis Bay neighborhood when she was ambushed and shot to death around 1:30 a.m. After he was shot, his car drove across Pennington Avenue, through a fence, down an embankment and into a park, where he stopped. Bullets had hit Holley in the head twice, damaging his brain and spine.

The 39-year-old mother of four died in hospital about a week later. Family, friends and colleagues remember Holley joining the police force to support her community.

Around 3 a.m. the morning Holley was shot, two gunmen opened fire on Johnson, who was sitting in his 1997 Lincoln Town Car in the Yale Heights neighborhood. Six bullets tore through his back, damaging his spine, lungs and heart. He died at the scene.

The first clue for detectives investigating a co-worker's shooting came from a license plate reader in the Curtis Bay area that picked up the tag from a silver Hyundai registered to Knox. Security footage showed the parking lot around the block from where Holley was shot. Two men could be seen getting out, walking towards Holley and running back to the car moments later.

Police stopped Knox's car and arrested him hours after the shooting. In a small interrogation room in the homicide unit at Baltimore police headquarters, Knox misled detectives for hours before confessing to his presence at both shootings.

Knox directed detectives to a home where he was storing guns in backpacks hidden in a bedroom closet. Investigators recovered a Glock 22 handgun and an AR-style pistol where Knox said they would be located. The gun was equipped with a homemade “brass catcher” to catch the shell casings when the weapon was fired. There were also gloves, masks and extra magazines in the bags.

A police firearms examiner said the .40-caliber casings recovered by police at both scenes were “consistent” with being fired by the Glock 22, while the .223-caliber casing recovered at of Johnson's murder was “consistent” with having been fired by the AR-style pistol.

Knox and Shaw matched a profile of genetic material collected from the AR-style gun, a police DNA analyst also testified. The analyst was unable to identify anyone's DNA from the handgun.

Throughout Knox's trial, Assistant State's Attorney Kurt Bjorklund argued that both Knox and Shaw opened fire on Johnson, pointing out the different caliber of shell casings found at the scene. Bjorklund insisted it was Knox who shot Holley, pointing to a video showing Knox being closest to Holley before the shooting and behind Shaw as they fled.

Jurors acquitted Knox of the charge of using a firearm in connection with Holley's murder.