16-year-old Jaylen Prince was convicted of first degree murder after he shot and killed another student at Joppatowne High.
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The normally peaceful Harford County was rocked in the last three years with violence that involved teenagers. One of the most shocking was the shooting of 15-year-old Warren Grant inside Joppatowne High School. The teen was shot and killed by 16-year-old Jaylen Prince inside a school bathroom.
The community was shattered by the incident particularly as it came on the heels of other violent murders in the county in the past three years. A mother of five, Rachel Morin, was killed by an illegal immigrant from El Salvador as she hiked on the Mom and Pop Trail in August of 2023. He was found guilty of first degree murder along with rape and other charges.
Another illegal who was a member of MS-13, pled guilty to the 2022 murder of 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton. Walter Javier Martinez was 17 when he was arrested and charged with first- and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree rape, a third-degree sex offense, robbery, assault and theft. Judge Yolanda L. Curtin sentenced him to life in prison with all but 70 years suspended. His case caused additional alarm within the Harford County School System as he was allowed to continue attending public school after being named as a suspect.
In the case of Jaylen Prince, the suspect was tried as an adult and found guilty of first-degree murder, first- and second-degree assault, and use of a firearm in commission of a felony shortly after the shooting. The jury found him guilty on all counts.
Harford County State’s Attorney Alison Healey and Prince’s defense attorney Staci Pipkin focused on whether the shooting was premeditated and whether Prince had intended to kill Grant — key elements in the first-degree murder charge. Healey cited the fact that Prince said ” I will kill you” four times in a cell phone video before he shot Grant. Pipkin stated that Prince shot Grant out of fear that Grant and his friends would attack him. He said Prince was “not a calculated, cold-blooded murderer but a kid who made a horrible decision.”
Prince claimed the gun “accidently went off.” Video of the incident proved otherwise.
The jury found him guilty on all counts. It took them three hours to decide the verdict.
The two incidents that involved juveniles highlighted a growing problem of juvenile crime in Maryland, particularly since the Maryland Legislature has drastically reduced the consequences adolescents can face when they commit crime. They also brought to the issue of safety in the public schools in Harford County and across Maryland.
Jan Greenhawk
The post Joppatowne Maryland Teen Found Guilty Of First Degree Murder appeared first on The Easton Gazette.
