With three and a half months left in the year, Anne Arundel County’s 2025 homicide rates are tracking on par with the number of homicides reported in 2024.
According to data from the Annapolis and Anne Arundel County police departments, there have been 10 homicides throughout the county so far this year. Last year, there were 13 homicides in total.
With 21 homicides reported in the county in 2023, last year’s homicide rates were the lowest in nearly a decade.
In Annapolis, police have reported four homicides this year. County police have reported six. Of the 10 total homicide cases this year, police say six of them have been solved.
Marc Limansky, a spokesperson for the Anne Arundel County Police Department, said that at this time last year, the department had opened investigations into its eight homicides.
He said the department attributes the decrease in year-to-date homicides to the “hard work” of officers, advancements in technology and collaboration with those in the county who want to keep their community safe.
Kortlan Jackson, a spokesperson for Annapolis Police, said that this time last year, one homicide had been reported in the city. In total, there were two homicides reported last year in Annapolis, he said.
When asked about the increase in homicides from last year, Jackson told the Capital Gazette that most of the homicides in Annapolis this year were “senseless.”
Annapolis Police Department
As of Thursday, Annapolis Police said investigators have solved two of the city’s four homicides this year.
In March, Roscoe Jones was charged with the death of John Simms Jr., 36. Police said Simms was shot multiple times after gunfire broke out at a school bus stop on the 100 block of Clay Street that month.
Jones does not have any upcoming court hearings scheduled, according to court records. He did not have an attorney listed in court records as of Friday afternoon.
Police have also charged William Hairston with the death of 37-year-old Gregory Wells, who police found suffering from multiple gunshot wounds on Tyler Avenue in late April.
Hairston has a court hearing scheduled for Sept. 22, according to court records. His attorney, public defender Irene Ibongo, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Police have not yet made arrests in two of its other homicide cases this year, Jackson said.
One of those cases is the death of 16-year-old Kenneth Eugene Gray Jr., who police say was shot and killed inside a relative’s home in the 100 block of Holeclaw Street in Parole in February.
The other case is the death of 23-year-old Raishaun Mason, who police say was killed in a shooting at the Bay Ridge Gardens apartments in Annapolis in early July.
Jackson said the department did not have updates for either of these unsolved cases.
Anne Arundel County Police Department
Anne Arundel County Police said it has recorded six homicides so far this year and solved four of them.
In late May, teens Jonah Poole and Kylee Dakes were charged with murdering 67-year-old Davidsonville shop owner Edward Stephen Koza. Police allege that on May 24, Koza was attacked in his store and then bound and gagged and put into his own truck, which was then set ablaze.
Poole and Dakes both have court hearings scheduled for Oct. 28, according to court records. Neither attorney Andrew Jezic, who is representing Dakes, nor public defender Caroline Spies, who is representing Poole, immediately responded to requests for comment Friday.
In June, Cedric Callaway was indicted on murder charges by an Anne Arundel County grand jury for the death of his wife. Sarah Bundy, 44, was found dead in an alley in Brooklyn Park in late May.
Callaway has a court hearing scheduled for Jan. 13, according to court records. Michele Vignola, a public defender representing Callaway, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Also in June, police reported that 45-year-old Monyette Stephenson had been shot and killed by her estranged husband, Trimall Stephenson, in Odenton. According to police, Trimall Stephenson died by suicide before he could be arrested.
In July, 17-year-old Mactouko Ryan was charged with murder in a shooting in May outside the Crazy Crab restaurant in Glen Burnie that police said left 18-year-old Jonathan Guiliani dead.
As of Thursday, Ryan did not have any upcoming court hearings scheduled, according to the Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney’s Office. Court records for Ryan’s case were not public as of Friday, and the State’s Attorney’s Office declined to share the name of Ryan’s attorney.
Anne Arundel County Police are still investigating the deaths of Karon Cann and Heather Beaver. Limansky said Thursday that the department did not have any updates on either case.
In early February, first responders found Cann lying on the ground outside his home in Severn. Police said the 24-year-old had been shot and killed. Police described it as a “targeted incident.”
In early April, police arrived at the 1200 block of Lorene Court in Pasadena for a report of a possible overdose. Police said Beaver, 34, was taken to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries and pronounced dead later that day. In May, police said that an autopsy revealed she had died as a result of blunt force trauma and her death was ruled a homicide.
Although the March 4 deaths of Derrick McDonald, 23, and Mack Galloway III, 28, who were shot and killed near a Severn park, were opened as a homicide investigation, Limansky said the investigation revealed the two were killed in self-defense and no charges were filed.
County police do not count McDonald and Galloway’s deaths as homicides, Limansky said.
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