On the night before Halloween in 2004, a group of young boys ran around their Turners Station neighborhood in Dundalk, tossing eggs, firing BB guns and making mischief.
"They had no way of knowing," Baltimore County prosecutor Jennifer Schiffer told a jury yesterday at the opening of a murder trial, "the fury that their actions would create."
When one egg hit a woman squarely in the chest, a teenager at the party she was attending ran after the boys with a sword. Later, people at the party called some friends, who went looking with a gun for the boys.
Caught in the commotion was a 73-year-old great-grandfather, who was fatally shot as he walked through his neighborhood at dusk.
"I didn't know it would escalate the way it did," testified Khaleedah Jones, the woman hit with an egg.
The testimony came on the first day of the murder trial of Jose Antonio Bassat, who is accused of firing a .357-caliber Magnum handgun out the window of a sport-utility vehicle as his friends sped through the neighborhood.
He is charged with first-degree murder in the death of George Linwood King, a veteran of the Korean War and a retired Bethlehem Steel worker who was known throughout his community simply as "Mister George."
Accused of shooting at two of the boys, Bassat, 30, is also charged with first-degree assault and several handgun offenses.
Defense attorney Larry Pollen told jurors during his opening statement that only one thing is certain.
"This was a terrible tragedy for Mr. King," he said. "Mr. King had nothing to do with what was happening in Turners Station, other than he was walking through the neighborhood. There is no dispute about that. He did not deserve - his family did not deserve - what happened that night."
Pollen told jurors that the case revolves around the family that hosted the Halloween party that night.
"It's about that family feeling very much put upon by their neighbors," he said.
The defense attorney said three people - not including his client - went after the egg throwers with a handgun. "There was a lot of shooting. It went in multiple directions," Pollen said. "It's likely that it is one of those bullets that struck and killed Mr. King."
One of the men Pollen mentioned by name in court pleaded guilty in May to second-degree murder in King's death and use of a handgun in a violent crime.
