Getaway driver in Rodgers Forge shooting is sentenced to 25 years in prison

A Baltimore County judge sentenced the teenage getaway driver in the Rodgers Forge shooting that severely injured a beloved youth soccer coach to 25 years in prison Wednesday, exceeding sentencing guidelines and prosecutors’ recommendations.

Judge Robert E. Cahill Jr. said the sentencing guidelines, which called for a maximum of 15 years, “did not accurately address the horror” of the afternoon of Sept. 13, 2024, when Kai Wilson shot Mark McKenzie as he cleaned out an alley behind his home in the tight-knit rowhouse community near the city line.

Moments later, Kamar Thompson drove his and Wilson’s stolen getaway car back to Baltimore City and cleaned the bloodstains with bleach — all of which cameras captured and prosecutors played in court.

McKenzie nearly died several times and has endured five surgeries and 20 medical procedures. He couldn’t walk for a time, had to leave his job for nearly a year, and has incurred more than $500,000 in medical bills, he testified Wednesday.

“That pain and expense are just unimaginable,” Cahill said.

Cahill noted Thompson’s extensive juvenile arrest record and his habit of cutting off ankle monitors while on home detention.

“By definition, he appears to be incorrigible at this point and time,” Cahill said. Thompson was 16 at the time of the shooting and had a difficult upbringing, but Cahill noted that Thompson had been through the juvenile system, to no avail.

“We’ve tried it, the juvenile system. It was perfectly horrible, abysmal,” Cahill said.

Thompson’s public defender, Alexandria Chun, argued that her client suffered from multiple mental health challenges and asked that he serve his sentence at the Patuxent Institution, a maximum-security facility that focuses on mental health treatment. She also showed some photographs at the sentencing that she said suggested that Thompson was a passenger and not the driver.

Though she said she would not dispute the “absolutely devastating and horrible” nature of the crime, she reminded the judge that Thompson was the driver, not the shooter.

“At some point, he is going to come back into the community,” Chun said, “and I’d like him to be better, instead of worse.”

Thompson and Wilson were both scheduled for trial on attempted first-degree murder charges. Shortly before jury selection, they opted for Alford pleas, in which they maintain their innocence but acknowledge that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict them. Courts treat those as guilty pleas for sentencing purposes.

Wilson will be sentenced July 13.

Thompson pleaded guilty to attempted robbery and using a firearm in the commission of a violent crime. The judge sentenced him to 20 years on each charge, to be served consecutively, and then suspended all but 25 years. He won’t be eligible for parole for at least five years.

Neighbors and friends gasped as prosecutor Matt Darnbrough played a video of the crime. After Wilson approached McKenzie with the gun, shot him and ran away, McKenzie can be heard on the phone groaning in pain. The father of three said he wasn’t sure if he’d been shot with a BB gun or a real gun.

“Help, help!” McKenzie said. “He shot me in the stomach.”

Darnbrough then played another video showing Thompson and Wilson returning to a home in the city where a toddler was running around and a grade school child did cartwheels. They appeared to change clothes and put away a gun, then walked out with a jug of bleach and cleaned the blood out of the white SUV parked a block away.

While they were doing that, Darnbrough said on Wednesday, McKenzie was fighting for his life at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

McKenzie told the judge he did not coach the soccer game he had volunteered for the next day and missed soccer games for many months after the shooting. He couldn’t take care of his father, who was undergoing chemotherapy. His wife needed to leave her job for several months to care for him and their children, which hurt the family financially. He suffers from pain daily and lost about half of his liver as well as his gallbladder.

Thompson didn’t speak at the sentencing, but Chun, his public defender, gave a letter to the judge. Cahill read it to himself from the bench, but didn’t appear to consider any mitigating factors when imposing the sentence.

“We’re going to treat him like an adult, which he is, and he is going to suffer the consequences as an adult, which he will,” the judge said.