In the dark that Halloween eve, the suspect thought he spotted one of the teenagers who had been throwing eggs at his friend?s house in Dundalk.
“There?s one,” he said, as he rolled down the car window, pulled out his gun and fired. “I got him.”
That?s how the killing of George King occurred, according to prosecutor Stephanie Porter, who gave her closing arguments to a Baltimore County jury late Monday afternoon.
“Over what? Egg throwing?” Porter asked incredulously. “He shot at what he thought was a boy ? who was really a 73-year-old man ? all over some eggs?”
Jose Bassat, 30, is charged with first-degree murder in the Oct. 30, 2004, shooting death of King, a Dundalk great-grandfather whom police described as an innocent victim walking down the street.
On the evening before Halloween, a group of teens threw eggs at a house where Bassat?s friends were having a party. Someone at the party called Bassat and Jose Emmanuel Otero, 24, who drove to Avondale Road to settle the score, prosecutors said.
The men fired at the group of teens, but missed as they ran away, Porter said.
A short time later, Bassat spotted King, mistook him for a boy, and opened fire, she said.
King was hit in the leg and bled extensively. He died at Johns Hopkins Bayview Hospital.
Defense attorney Larry Polen said it would be impossible for Bassat to have shot King, because of Bassat?s position in the car and King?s location. Polen suggested someone else shot King earlier while firing at the teens ? and his client merely drove by as King was bleeding to death.
“They haven?t proven exactly how this thing happened,” Polen told the jury. “They haven?t proven exactly who shot Mr. King.”
Otero pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
