Adrian McFadden was pointing a black six-shot revolver at Avon Ball Jr.'s face and threatening to pull the trigger.
Ball's foster brother, George T. Johnson, stared back at the gunman and pleaded, "Don't shoot him, shoot me."
The gunman obliged, fatally hitting Johnson four times on a West Baltimore street on July 6 of last year. But the shooter didn't stop there. Prosecutors said McFadden opened fire on Ball, who by then was running away. Bullets struck him and a teenage girl who happened to be nearby.
McFadden approached the mortally wounded Johnson and, according to trial testimony, asked, "Is he dead yet?" Then he walked back down Payson Street, polishing the gun barrel with his T-shirt.
It's the best and worst of Baltimore.
The best being a man begs for his life to be taken over his brother's.
The worst being the gunman callously carries out the demand.
A jury convicted McFadden, 31, of first-degree murder, handgun and assault charges after deliberating for five hours following a trial that stretched for days in front of Circuit Judge Charles Bernstein. Jurors acquitted co-defendant, Anthony Davante Miles, 25, of a murder charge but found him guilty of several counts of assault.
Earlier this month, a surveillance video was released showing the city and the nation two men robbing a man in a Northeast Baltimore convenience store and shooting him in the leg as two young girls laughed and customers stepped over the prone victim to retrieve their dinner orders.
For anyone who thinks they've seen and heard it all, there's always a new low to which we can sink.
The shootings of Ball and Johnson are worse.
Both of them tried to leave before the confrontation got ugly but were pursued by the defendants and at least three of their friends. Witnesses testified that when the first shots were fired, Ball and Johnson had their hands in the air and were backing up, trying to reach their white Mazda Millennium and Ball's 7-month-old son who was strapped to a car seat inside.
"And George Johnson says, 'You can't take that car' and it looks like somebody is going to get shot, and God bless him and may he rest in peace, he says, 'Don't shoot him, shoot me,' " Assistant State's Attorney Theresa Shaffer told jurors. "And what does Mr. McFadden do? OK, no problem."
