A man is standing trial again this week in a mass shooting at the Edmondson Village Shopping Center that killed one high school student and wounded four others in 2023, sparking outrage across the city and igniting calls for change.

Prosecutors called nine witnesses on Tuesday in the retrial of Daaon Spears, 19, of Edmondson Village, who’s charged in Baltimore Circuit Court with first-degree murder and related offenses. They included crime lab technicians who testified about their efforts to document and collect evidence at the scene.

In her opening statement, Assistant State’s Attorney Rita Wisthoff-Ito said Spears and his co-conspirator, Bryan Johnson, opened fire outside a Popeyes in the shopping center on Jan. 4, 2023, killing Deanta Dorsey and wounding four other students who attended Edmondson-Westside High School.

Dorsey, she said, was shot 16 times.

“When you shoot somebody 16 times, what is your intent?” Wisthoff-Ito said. “Your intent is to kill.”

Wisthoff-Ito played frantic 911 calls for members of the jury and showed them body camera video from Baltimore Police officers who responded to the shopping center that depicted the chaos in the aftermath of the shooting.

Maryland Assistant Medical Examiner Edernst Noncent testified that Dorsey’s cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds.

The manner of death was homicide, Noncent said.

Brandon Taylor, Spears’ attorney, described the shooting as tragic but stated that “convicting an innocent kid for what happened is not justice.”

“The state is pointing their fingers in the wrong direction,” Taylor said in his opening statement. “Mr. Spears is not guilty.”

Spears has no connection to the students, he said, and lacked a motive to commit the crime.

Taylor implored members of the jury not to be swayed by sympathy or public opinion.

“The courtroom is not governed by headlines,” he said. “The courtroom is governed by the Constitution.”

At the time of the shooting, Spears was 16. He previously stood trial in 2024, but a jury could not reach a unanimous verdict.

Circuit Judge Lynn Stewart Mays is presiding over the trial, which will resume on Wednesday.

Johnson, 19, of Shipley Hill, is also charged with first-degree murder and related offenses in the shooting. His trial could immediately begin after the jury returns a verdict in the Spears case.

Dorsey was a sophomore as well as a loving and quiet child who enjoyed playing basketball and video games, according to his obituary. Loved ones affectionately called him “Dink.” He was 16.

Outside the courtroom, Thiru Vignarajah, an attorney for the Dorsey family, described the trial as an important step.

“The family has waited a long time for justice,” Vignarajah said. “They are prepared to wait a little longer, but they are hopeful that this will bring a measure of justice after a long, dark chapter.”

The killers, he said, “need to be brought to justice.”