At approximately 6:20 p.m. on January 14, 2020, 32-year-old Cordelle Bruce was shot 14 times outside of an apartment building on East Belvedere Avenue near its intersection with The Alameda, a parkway in Baltimore, Maryland. Bruce was known to sell marijuana at a nearby shopping center fronted on The Alameda.
A witness who was in a car stopped at a traffic light in the westbound lane of East Belvedere Avenue at its intersection with The Alameda told police she saw three men to her right on the far side of the intersection about 300 feet away. She said she saw “sparks,” and heard several gunshots before one of the men collapsed on a grassy area on the north side of East Belvedere Avenue. The other two men, who appeared to be wearing “dark clothing,” ran westbound, weaving between cars. She said she could not see their faces.
A 911 caller who witnessed the shooting also described two men running away from the scene, one wearing a gray/blue hoodie and the second wearing “all black.” According to the caller, both men entered a four-door, dark-colored car that drove away.
Baltimore Police Detective Frank Jenkins responded to the scene. He recovered five nine-millimeter shell casings, two cell phones, two sets of keys, and two large bags of suspected marijuana. The casings were not analyzed to determine if they were fired from the same or different firearms.
Detective Jenkins obtained surveillance footage from multiple locations near the shooting, including a Family Dollar store and buildings located on East Belvedere Avenue. A police digital forensics technician compiled the surveillance footage in chronological order to create a 16-minute video depicting the timeline of events from 6:03 p.m. until right after the shooting.
A week later, on January 20, 2020, Bruce’s 27-year-old brother, Cornelius Bruce, was fatally shot. Police would later conclude that Cornelius, 25-year-old Jimmy Murphy, and possibly a third person had sought to avenge the shooting of Cordelle. During a shootout, Cornelius was killed by a bullet from Murphy’s gun, police said.
The compilation surveillance video, which had no audio, consisted primarily of two segments. The first 11 minutes, from 6:03 p.m. to 6:14 p.m., was in color and well-lit. At 6:03 p.m., Cordelle Bruce could be seen in the parking lot next to The Alameda with another man, identified as James Lighty. Also present was Jamal Pinchback.
The video showed a Black Volvo sport utility vehicle (SUV) arrive there at 6:07 p.m. Detective Jenkins was able to trace the license plate on the vehicle to the mother of 20-year-old Daran Horton. By viewing the footage, Jenkins concluded that Horton was driving and was accompanied by a passenger, 19-year-old Christopher Brown. Horton and Brown were wearing identical two-tone hooded sweatshirts that had a white upper section and a gray lower section. Both were wearing gray knit hats.
Brown was wearing glasses and fur-lined boots as well as a gray open jacket over his sweatshirt. As Brown and Horton greeted Bruce and the others, Horton donned a black hooded jacket.
At 6:12 p.m., Pinchback drove off in a dark-colored sedan. At 6:13 p.m., Bruce began walking across the parking lot toward East Belvedere. Less than a minute later, Horton, accompanied by Brown, drove out of the parking lot.
The second part of the video was a view from a single camera outside a laundry room at an apartment building on East Belvedere Avenue. It was in black and white and much grainier than the parking lot footage. It captured part of the 1100 block of East Belvedere. The shooting had occurred on the same block, but was out of the camera’s view.
At 6:18 p.m., a person wearing a hooded jacket with the hood up walked past the camera and appeared to be wearing fur-lined boots. Jenkins concluded that this was Brown based on the man’s clothing.
At 6:21 p.m., shots were fired, and people began running. At the same time, a dark-colored SUV appeared in view on East Belvedere Avenue. It stopped in the roadway. Two people ran toward the vehicle. One person entered the vehicle, and the second person continued running. The SUV then drove away.
On February 13, 2020, Jenkins interviewed Brown. Brown identified himself in a still photograph taken from the parking lot surveillance footage. He also gave Jenkins permission to search his cell phone. His social media account was accessed and showed a photograph of Brown with Horton.
That same day, detectives interviewed Horton. At first, Horton denied being near the scene, saying he was with his “girl.” After being shown a still photograph of the Volvo in the parking lot, Horton admitted that it was his car, but insisted he was not there. Eventually, Horton said he had heard gunshots, but it was when he was driving on Belvedere. Asked whom he picked up on Belvedere, Horton said, “I didn’t pick nobody up, sir.”
He was then confronted with a still shot from the East Belvedere footage depicting the dark-colored SUV that a person had run to and jumped into immediately after the shooting. Horton agreed that one person did jump into his vehicle, but he stated that he did not “really know the dude.” He said that he stopped because he saw the person running.
The detective said that the video showed that Horton stopped his vehicle “before the shots rang out.” Horton did not deny this, but said, “I probably had to do something. . . .I probably was doing something. Sometimes I stop and do that.” He suggested that maybe he received a call.
Subsequently, police analyzed Brown’s cell phone records and concluded that the activity was consistent with him being in the area of the parking lot between 6:12 p.m. and 6:16 p.m. The records indicated that by 6:30 p.m., he was near Herring Run Park, about four miles away.
The police also located a photograph that Horton posted on social media on January 14, 2020, the same day as the shooting. The photo showed Brown and Horton together, and Horton had commented, “We ain’t hiding.” In the photo, Brown and Horton were wearing knit hats similar to those shown in the still photo from the parking lot footage.
On February 1, 2022, Brown and Horton were indicted on charges of first-degree murder and firearms violations.
The prosecution filed a motion for a joint trial for Brown and Horton. Brown’s defense attorney, Linda Zeit, objected. At a hearing on the motion, Zeit argued that a joint trial would be unfairly prejudicial. Zeit noted that in Horton’s police statement, he identified as his Volvo an image of a car that arrived on Belvedere within moments of the shooting and that a man jumped into, despite the surveillance footage being distant, blurry, and indistinct. Zeit contended that if Brown were tried alone, that admission–which was particularly harmful because the much clearer parking lot surveillance footage showed Brown getting into Horton’s Volvo minutes earlier–would not be heard by the jury.
The motion for a joint trial was granted after the judge said that evidence prejudicial to Brown would not be allowed before the jury.
Despite that ruling, when the trial began in September 2022 in Baltimore City Circuit Court, Brown’s statement did come into evidence as well as his questionable explanation for why the Volvo was there.
When Horton’s statement was played, Judge Paul Alpert advised the jury that it could “consider such evidence only as it relates to the [d]efendant against [whom] it was admitted, that’s Defendant Horton.”
Detective Jenkins testified and identified Horton and Brown as the 16-minute video compilation was played for the jury.
Brendan Plasha, a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), testified that he had examined Brown’s cell phone and the phone’s extraction report, which contained fitness tracking data. The data showed that Brown had only walked 27 steps during the time period when he was alleged to have walked down Belvedere Avenue, shot Bruce, and ran back to Horton’s car, but the jury did not hear that evidence
The defense sought to elicit the step counter data from Plasha, but Judge Alpert sustained the prosecution’s objections. Judge Alpert ruled that such data could only be elicited from an expert, who would need to interpret the data for the jury. Zeit contended that the step counter data was simple and based on commonplace technology and therefore did not require an expert to interpret.
During a sidebar conference, Zeit showed Judge Alpert how his phone tracked his steps. The judge was not moved, and the evidence was not allowed.
The prosecution also admitted into evidence the “We ain’t hiding” photograph that Horton posted on Instagram on January 14, 2020–the same day as the shooting.
Evidence showed that the police had received tips that a man named Franklin Cuff was the shooter and that Pinchback was involved. Both could be seen departing the area before the murder. Pinchback got into the passenger seat of a silver or dark-colored sedan. In March 2021, more than a year after the shooting, Pinchback was killed at the shopping center.
The prosecution presented other evidence that was only applicable to Horton. This included evidence that after the shooting, Horton made plans to flee Baltimore and move to West Virginia and evidence that he sought out a person to claim to have been in possession of the Volvo on the night of the murder. The prosecution contended this was evidence of Horton’s consciousness of guilt.
Judge Alpert instructed the jury that “[s]ome evidence was admitted only against one Defendant and not against the other Defendant.” He instructed the jurors to “consider such evidence only as it relates to the Defendant against whom it was admitted.”
On September 9, 2022, the jury convicted Horton of first-degree murder, possession of a firearm by a person under 21 years of age, and possession of a handgun. Brown was convicted of first-degree murder, possession of a handgun, possession of a firearm by a person under 21 years of age, and use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence.
Brown was sentenced to life in prison. Horton was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
On appeal, Brown contended he should have had a separate trial and that the footsteps evidence should have been allowed without requiring an expert to testify.
“In general, phone step counter data is hardly a cutting-edge technology that is only used in rarified circles,” Brown’s appellate attorney argued. “It has been a matter of popular knowledge for many years ... .Indeed, the fitness app that tracked [Brown’s] steps is included on modern iPhones by default. That is why defense counsel was able to pull up the day’s step counter data on the trial judge’s phone.”
In August 2025, the Appellate Court of Maryland vacated Brown’s convictions and ordered a new trial, ruling that Brown should have been given a separate trial.
“Although the court gave a limiting instruction, and we generally presume that jurors abide by instructions given by the court…we conclude that…it would be very difficult for jurors to erase from their minds Horton’s identification of his vehicle in the East Belvedere footage and the implications connecting Brown to the shooting,” the court declared.
The court noted that the Belvedere video, unlike the parking lot footage, was “not very clear, and without Horton’s admission that the vehicle shown in that video was his, the jury may not have been able to determine from that video footage the make or model of the dark-colored SUV that stopped in the roadway or the person who ran and jumped into that SUV immediately after the shooting.” The court noted that police initially believed the vehicle was a blue Honda CRV, not a Volvo SUV.
“Horton’s non-mutually admissible statement identified his SUV as the vehicle that stopped in the middle of the roadway just before the shooting—the same SUV that an unknown man ran towards and jumped into immediately after the shooting before the vehicle sped off,” the court said. “This identification, coupled with Horton’s apparent lies that he did not know the identity of the man who jumped into his vehicle and did not remember why he stopped in the middle of the roadway, implicated Brown as the person running away after the shooting, which permitted the jury to find that he was the shooter.”
The court said, “[W]e conclude… it would be very difficult for jurors to erase from their minds Horton’s identification of his vehicle in the East Belvedere footage and the implications connecting Brown to the shooting.”
The court did not address the defense argument that Judge Alpert had erroneously ruled that an expert witness was required to present the footsteps evidence. In the same ruling, the court upheld Horton’s convictions and sentence.
Brown went to trial a second time in June 2026, represented by Zeit. In this trial, Jenkins was not asked to identify anyone in the video compilation. And Zeit was allowed to present the evidence showing that Brown only took 27 steps during the time of the crime.
On June 12, 2026, Brown was acquitted and released.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 07-06-2026
