A man and a woman, both 27, were in custody Friday following their arrests in the killing of Lamont Kareen Blackston, 35, a football coach whose wife found him shot to death in his home in Granite before dawn on Tuesday, Baltimore County police announced.
James S. Tanner was charged with first-degree murder and was jailed without bail. Terell Vaughnette Spencer was charged with conspiracy to commit murder and with being an accessory after the fact; she was held in lieu of $150,000 bail.
Police said they were still trying to identify two other men involved in the crime.
A few hours after the Police Department's 3 p.m. announcement at a news briefing Friday, players and fellow coaches of the Charm City Buccaneers - part of a youth league in which Blackston was assistant coach for the Junior Midgets - planned to hold a candlelight vigil in his memory at Leon Day Park in the city's Rosemont district.
"As you are aware by now, we have lost a coach and friend in Lamont Blackston Sr., better known as Coach L.A.," a notice on the Buccaneers' Web site said. It went on to give details of the vigil and of Blackston's funeral next week at Woodlawn Cemetery.
Police said it appeared that several people had met Blackston when he arrived home and forced him inside. The intruders searched the house and then shot Blackston before leaving, police said. Detectives said they believe the motive was robbery.
Cpl. Mike Hill, a police spokesman, said that a van spotted on a road near the crime scene shortly after police were summoned, but which a pursuing officer ultimately lost sight of, turned out to have been stolen from Tanner's grandmother. It was later found abandoned in Northwest Baltimore and, after a forensic examination, deemed to have been used by the suspects on the night of the murder, Hill said.
On Wednesday afternoon, undercover detectives who were looking for Tanner saw Spencer and him in a car on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near U.S. 40. They pulled the car over and, after a brief conversation, arrested the two suspects.
In July 2008, a criminal case against Tanner was not prosecuted "because the victim recanted the identification of the defendant as the person who shot him," Margaret T. Burns, a spokeswoman for State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, said Friday. "We were unable to proceed."
