Jury deliberations began Tuesday in the case of a 19-year-old accused of a pair of 2023 shootings in Baltimore that left two people dead and six others wounded.

Jabre Griffith is charged with first-degree murder in the killings of 33-year-old Ernest Hall and 26-year-old Micah Strong. He also faces six counts of attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder and related firearms offenses.

Griffith’s trial in Baltimore Circuit Court began Nov. 4 and spanned a week, with the prosecution putting on 23 witnesses. The March 23, 2023, shootings were separated by almost 24 hours and seven miles.

Surveillance video from a gas station in the 2800 block of Edmondson Avenue in the Midtown-Edmondson neighborhood showed a blue sedan circling the block several times, Assistant State’s Attorney Victoria Yeager said Tuesday. Just after midnight, three gunmen wearing masks and gloves got out and opened fire, unleashing a volley of 50 shots at a group of people gathered outside of the gas station.

A 15-year-old boy and four other men, their ages ranging from 18 to 24, were injured by gunfire, according to police. Medics declared Hall, a legendary boxer who ran a Mount Vernon gym, dead at the scene. Yeager said detectives traced the blue sedan to Leon Day Park. They then watched as the group got into two awaiting vehicles, including a white Infiniti registered to Griffith.

Investigators also found a pair of nitrile gloves in the area where the suspects switched cars. DNA analysts identified Griffith’s genetic matter on one glove, Yeager said. Detectives later traced Griffith’s car from the park to the scene of another shooting around 11:15 p.m. the same day — almost 24 hours later — outside of the Pizza Boli’s in the 5400 block of York Road, which is in Homeland. Micah Strong, 26, died in that shooting, which also left a 25-year-old woman wounded.

Two shooters wearing masks and gloves were “lurking in the corner for about eight minutes” before opening fire, Yeager said.

A firearms examiner who examined ballistics evidence from both scenes testified that three guns were used in the first shooting, where 50 shots were fired, and two in the second shooting, where the gunmen fired 20 times. The examiner said .40 caliber cartridge casings picked up at both scenes were “consistent with” having been fired by the same handgun.

“It’s not a coincidence,” Yeager told jurors, asking them to find Griffith, 19, guilty of all the crimes he’s charged with.

Defense attorney Michael Tomko countered that no witness identified Griffith as a shooter. He argued it was impossible to make out his client from the “blurry” video. “There is absolutely no competent evidence that you have that Mr. Jabre Griffith was at that scene,” Tomko told jurors.

Tomko downplayed the significance of his client’s car being linked to both shootings, arguing that he could have loaned his car to someone that day.

“Are you prepared to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt based solely on the guesswork of the government? I suggest that you are not,” Tomko said.

In addition to getting geographic data from Griffith’s phone, detectives got a warrant for his car’s “infotainment system” which included GPS data. An FBI agent plotted the phone locations on a map over several hours that day, showing where it was based on the cell phone towers the phone pinged off of.

The agent, Michael Fowler, testified that Griffith’s phone was either turned off or placed onto “Airplane Mode,” or disconnected from the cellular network, at the times of both shootings, according to prosecutors.

“Except for when the phone is off, you never see that phone not traveling with that vehicle,” Yeager said. She argued that the fact that the shooters wore masks and gloves and that Griffith likely turned his phone off were evidence of premeditation.

“This wasn’t spur of the moment,” Yeager said. “These murders were planned.”

Tomko questioned the exactness of the phone records, arguing that the maps from Fowler could only prove that Griffith’s phone was “somewhere in the area of West Baltimore.”

He described his client as a “good boy,” who went to class and played football at Dunbar High School. He said Griffith’s father attended all of his sporting events.

When detectives examined the contents of Griffith’s phone, they found a note with apparent rap lyrics. Prosecutors said the song described both shootings.

“The lyrics in that phone were written in the first person,” Assistant State’s Attorney Tonya LaPolla told jurors. “I would suggest to you that means he was one of the shooters.”

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