Trial begins for man charged in Morgan State shooting that wounded 5 during homecoming

As students, parents and other visitors celebrated homecoming, Morgan State University Police Detective Durel Hairston was trying to keep people safe.

On Oct. 3, 2023, Hairston was working traffic control, making sure that people could cross Argonne Drive after the coronation of Mister and Miss Morgan State University. Then he heard gunfire.

“I couldn’t tell how many shooters,” Hairston testified on Monday in the Elijah E. Cummings Courthouse in Baltimore. “There were multiple shots.”

Hairston ran toward the Murphy Fine Arts Center and Thurgood Marshall Hall and encountered one man who had been hit. He later spotted two additional victims in the grass also suffering from gunshot wounds.

More than 2 1/2 years after gunfire marred what had been a beautiful evening, Marquis Brown, 20, of Washington, D.C., is standing trial this week in Baltimore Circuit Court on charges of conspiracy to commit attempted first-degree murder and related offenses. At the time of the shooting, he was 17.

Prosecutors allege Brown and Jovan “Chewy” Williams opened fire at the historically Black university in Northeast Baltimore, wounding five people.

“They recklessly endangered the lives of hundreds of people,” Assistant State’s Attorney Marina Makkar said in her opening statement.

Makkar said one of the victims identified the two men as the shooters after police disseminated surveillance video and still photos to news organizations.

When law enforcement arrested Brown, he was in a car with a man who had a gun, Makkar said. Firearm and toolmark examination, she said, revealed that it was consistent with one of the weapons used in the shooting.

But Assistant Public Defender Judit Otvos, one of Brown’s attorneys, said while her client was on campus that night, he committed no crime.

“The state tells a great story about what happened,” Otvos said in her opening statement. “If everything was that simple or that straightforward, we wouldn’t be here.”

Otvos said the victim initially provided investigators with a different description of the perpetrators. Brown also did not know about the gun, she said, which was “deep in someone’s pants.”

“Marquis Brown is in fact not guilty of all of the charges,” said Otvos, who’s representing him alongside Assistant Public Defender Jennifer Davis.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley said at the time that four of the victims were students and one was a visitor. Detectives, he said, did not believe they were the intended targets.

Morgan State University canceled additional homecoming events and classes for the rest of the week.

Williams, 21, of Washington, D.C., was sentenced in 2025 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to serve 15 years in federal prison for marijuana distribution and armed carjacking in an unrelated case. He remains incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution, Ray Brook, in upstate New York.

Brown was initially scheduled to go to trial in 2025, but the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office dropped the charges and obtained a new indictment after Baltimore Circuit Judge Althea M. Handy refused to postpone the case.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates said in a statement at the time that the judge “failed to recognize that public safety and the well-being of Baltimore’s residents justified the short postponement we sought.”

But Baltimore District Public Defender Marguerite Lanaux slammed the move as a “fundamental abuse of power.”

Handy called the tactic “so unprofessional.” But she denied a motion to dismiss the charges.