Allen Coates just wanted to be chivalrous.
So when he saw his date objecting as a stranger grabbed her butt at a Baltimore bar, Coates, 36, spoke up in a “quiet, non-confrontational voice,” prosecutors said.
But the man at the bar groping his girlfriend didn?t take rejection well.
Lamont Harrell, 23, pulled out a 9 mm handgun and shot Coates nine times March 10 on the dance floor of Maceo?s Lounge during a woman?s 32nd birthday party.
In Baltimore City Circuit Court Tuesday, Harrell pleaded guilty to two murders, including Coates?, and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Prosecutors said Harrell?s gun was also used in a third killing, though they do not have enough evidence to charge him with that crime.
“I just want to know, why? Why did he have to kill him?” Coates? mother, Minnie Madison, 62, of Catonsville, asked through tears. “Why did he have to shoot him so many times?”
Madison said her son was an innocent, hard-working gentleman, who laid pipe for a living.
“Oh mercy, Lord Jesus,” she cried out as prosecutors told the judge of her son?s death.
Harrell, who wore blue jeans and a wrinkled white striped dress shirt with his hands cuffed behind his back, said little in front of Judge Timothy Doory.
Asked if he would accept a plea deal under which prosecutors would lower his potential punishment from life in prison without parole to 50 years in prison, he simply said: “Accept.”
After police arrested Harrell for Coates?, the suspect also confessed to an earlier killing of Andre Jones, 30, on Feb. 20.
In that slaying, Harrell and an accomplice entered the Jus?Go deli in the 1800 block of Clifton Avenue and opened fire on Jones, who was playing a video poker game, killing him in a hail of 10 bullets.
Judge Doory said he couldn?t understand Harrell?s actions.
“The stupidity of it is astounding,” Doory said. “Maybe when you are released from prison you [will] be a different man, wiser, and able to do something for somebody. The person who you are when you come out is up to you. But the person who are now is somebody who is very, very, dramatically in need of prison.”
Under Maryland law, a prisoner convicted of a violent crime is eligible for parole after serving half of his sentence.
