They both lived on the streets, scraping together what money they could to get through each day.
So when Michael Walter Evans Sr. came into $500 in cash - temporary help from his brother - Allan Jake Clark, a 23-year-old with drug problems, had to have it, prosecutors say.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday in the beating death of Evans, 54, who was found dead April 5 on an air conditioning unit on Crain Highway in Glen Burnie, a block from a homeless shelter that the men frequented. He had died two days earlier, prosecutors said.
Four days after the body was found, Clark saw Evans' picture on a police flier and told a witness that the two men had gotten into an argument at a homeless camp near the Arundel House of Hope's Resource and Day Center, prosecutors said.
He described striking Evans several times, causing Evans to fall and hit his head, prosecutors said, and continued to hit and kick Evans until his ribs were broken, and took money from his wallet.
An autopsy determined that Evans died of multiple internal injuries, including fractured ribs and head trauma.
Clark's defense attorney, Karl H. Gordon, said in an interview that the medical examiner determined Evans had died hours before he was found, which conflicts with the witness' account that Clark said the killing had been committed days earlier.
Gordon said he plans to question the reliability of the witness, who he says is a drug user, and raise doubts about whether it is plausible that the body could have gone unnoticed in a commercial area for days.
Clark was initially charged April 17 with second-degree murder, robbery and assault. In May, he was indicted by an Anne Arundel County grand jury on additional charges of manslaughter and theft. In September, a charge of first-degree murder was added, and the previous indictment was tossed out.
Kristin Fleckenstein, a spokeswoman for the Anne Arundel County state's attorney's office, said that the case is eligible for the death penalty because of the underlying robbery, but that prosecutors decided against it.
"We believe that the facts and circumstances do not meet our standards for the types of cases [in which] we pursue that ultimate judgment," she said.
According to court documents, prosecutors intend to describe a number of purchases that Clark is suspected of making on the night of the incident, including at least one gram of powdered cocaine, breakfast at the Honeybee Diner, a cab ride from Glen Burnie to Brooklyn and a small amount of a substance thought to be crack cocaine.
