In November 2010, Keith D. Little’s boss reprimanded him for being late to his job as maintenance worker at Bethesda’s Suburban Hospital.
A few days after the supervisor was found slain in the hospital’s basement boiler room on New Year’s Day, a colleague found Little washing up gloves and a ski mask at work.
A jury is charged with deciding whether that scolding was the motive for a violent murder, or whether Roosevelt Brockington Jr. did his job by evaluating his employee, and Little was just doing his by cleaning up.
Those are the two views of the case against Little, 50, that prosecutors and defense attorneys offered during opening statements Tuesday at his first-degree murder trial in Montgomery County Circuit Court. Prosecutors say Little killed Brockington, 40, by stabbing him more than 70 times.
“The murder in this case was personal. The murder in this case was violent. The murder in this case was committed by a person who worked at Suburban Hospital,” prosecutor George Simms said. “There’s no other way.”
Simms said Little was angry because Brockington switched Little’s work hours when he found out Little lied in requesting a schedule change and reprimanded him for being late, making Little ineligible for a raise.
Simms said Little washed the gloves and ski mask in chemically-treated water, then threw them away, on Jan. 5 — “the actions of a guilty person,” he said.
Defense attorney Ronald Gottlieb countered that Little did not kill Brockington, arguing that “there was no hatred or animosity.” No evidence links Little to the slaying, and cleaning was his job, Gottlieb said.
“Mr. Little is doing nothing more than cleaning up the work station he’s assigned to clean,” he said.
Gottlieb sought to show that prosecutors jumped to conclusions in arresting Little. He read a letter Brockington wrote to an employee fired in 2010, warning the worker that he would be laid off if he continued missing work. The major DNA contributor to the mask Little washed was a woman, Gottlieb said. And police never tested a condom, vodka bottle or syringe found near the hospital exit prosecutors say the killer used.
Prosecutors began calling witnesses Tuesday.
A Suburban security officer said one camera in the boiler room wasn’t working on Jan. 1. The lead engineer at Greenbelt’s federal courthouse, where Little worked until Brockington learned that that job – not family obligations – was behind Little’s schedule-change request, said Little repeatedly said, “I’m going to get that [expletive],” referring to Brockington.
