Nearly four months after two people were fatally shot in what Baltimore police call a fit of “road rage,” officers have charged a Westminster man with two counts of first-degree murder.
Tavon Spruell, of the 400 block of Poole Road, was charged with murder, assault and handgun crimes in the Feb. 27 double homicide of Edward Baylor, 32, and Rebecca Meekins, 16, in Bolton Hill.
Members of the Warrant Apprehension Task Force arrested Spruell at 7 p.m. Thursday, said Agent Donny Moses, a Baltimore police spokesman.
At 5:40 p.m. that February day, Baylor and Meekins were traveling in a Crown Victoria near North and Pennsylvania avenues, when they nearly collided with a Volkswagen Jetta driven by Spruell and carrying two passengers, police said.
Spruell and Baylor then drove side by side yelling obscenities, according to charging documents.
“The verbal altercation escalated as Edward Baylor and Tavon Spruell both expressed their desires for the other to stop their vehicle and engage in a physical altercation,” Detective Corey Alston wrote in his report.
Both vehicles stopped on the 1500 block of Mount Royal Avenue ? and shots rang out from the Jetta?s passenger-side window, charging documents state.
Baylor tried to drive away, but Spruell followed; several parked cars were struck in the chase, including a Saturn sedan, which the Crown Victoria crashed into, police said.
Baylor and Meekins both suffered gunshot wounds to the upper body and were pronounced dead at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center.
Witnesses identified Spruell as the driver of the Jetta, which was recovered the next day on the 2700 block of Windsor Avenue in Baltimore, police said. The Jetta had been stolen from Baltimore County a week earlier, police said.
Moses said Spruell is the only person arrested in connection with the killings.
Spruell has a preliminary hearing scheduled for July 29. He was being held without bail Monday.
