Attorney questions physical evidence in Harris murder case
The attorney for one of two young men charged in the murder of former Baltimore City Councilman Kenneth Harris Sr. is questioning how police were able to obtain her client’s DNA.
“The defense is eager to find out how Mr. Collins’ DNA has been positively linked to physical evidence,” Jan Bledsoe, the attorney for Gary Collins, 20, told The Examiner Monday after a bail hearing for her client. “There’s been no warrant signed to compel his DNA and his only conviction is for a misdemeanor. Where did they get his DNA?”
Collins, of the 2600 block of Ivy Place in Parkville, is one of two men charged in the Sept. 20 fatal shooting of Harris in front of the Haven Lounge in the Northwood Shopping Plaza. Both Collins and Charles McGaney, 19, of the 1600 block of Lochwood Road in Baltimore, were ordered held without bail Monday. Theywere arrested Friday.
Spokeswomen for both the Baltimore Police Department and Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office said Monday that they could not immediately answer the question of how Collins’ DNA was obtained to match it to physical evidence taken from the crime scene.
“Gary Anthony Collins was positively identified through photographic array and positively linked by his DNA to the physical evidence recovered by police,” Baltimore homicide detective Donald Diehl wrote in charging documents. The documents do not mention searches of the state’s DNA database or a warrant to obtain a suspect’s DNA.
Police can obtain the DNA of suspects through other means, however. Detectives have been known to offer suspects a soda and save the can, in order to test the saliva — or test other items they know belongs to a certain suspect.
Robbers “ambushed” Harris as he stood in front of the Haven Lounge with owner Keith Covington, 54, according to charging documents. Harris attempted to run to his car and drive off, but was shot in his back through the driver’s window, police said.
Inside the lounge, the suspects stole a woman’s pocketbook, Covington’s wallet containing $160, and $1,375 from a safe, police said. A trial of physical evidence led detectives to an escape route, where they recovered Covington’s wallet and a skeleton mask worn by a suspect during the murder, charging documents state. Police said they found “several other pieces of evidence from which laboratory technicians were able to develop DNA profiles from.”
During their investigation, police said they located confidential witnesses who identified Collins and McGaney as the men caught on surveillance video walking in the shopping center — with McGaney carrying the skeleton mask — in the moments before the shooting.
Those witnesses will remain anonymous until trial, police said.
