Baltimore County Police said they arrested a 15-year-old in connection with the brazen September shooting of a 50-year-old man that sent shock waves through a Towson neighborhood.

Officers responded to an alley behind the 400 block of Dunkirk Road around 11:30 a.m. Sept. 13 and found the victim with a gunshot wound. Neighbors identified him as Mark McKenzie, a youth coach with the Towson Recreation Council and father of three beloved in the Rodgers Forge neighborhood.

“If there is a definition of a pillar in the community — Mark is definitely one of those people,” said Democratic Baltimore County Councilman Mike Ertel on Wednesday.

Charged as an adult, the 15-year-old arrested this week faces charges of attempted first-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, along with armed robbery, assault and firearms charges. Under Maryland law, court records for people under 18 are not publicly available.

According to charging documents for the teenager, surveillance footage showed McKenzie cleaning the back of his car when someone approached wearing a black sweatshirt with “distinctive markings” and the hood pulled up.

McKenzie turned just as the teen raised a handgun and pointed it at his head, charging papers said.

The two struggled during the “apparent robbery,” police wrote. McKenzie stumbled into an alley, the teen fired a single gunshot, and McKenzie fell to the ground. Witnesses said they saw a teen running in a black sweatshirt and getting into a small white SUV, according to charging documents.

McKenzie was taken to a Johns Hopkins hospital, according to charging documents, where he underwent surgery. A relative of McKenzie told police that McKenzie didn’t know the teen who was arrested in the shooting.Investigators matched the teen’s sweatshirt to one worn by a suspect in a Sept. 11 armed robbery on a Maryland Transit Administration bus. Detectives also determined the SUV was a white Kia Sportage, reported stolen and abandoned Sept. 13 in Baltimore City.

County detectives examined surveillance footage of the vehicle that captured the teen in the “distinctive” sweatshirt sitting in the front passenger seat, charging documents said. Video showed the teen and another person parking the car and then pouring bleach on the Kia’s door handles and inside the passenger door.

MTA detectives told investigators that the person robbed on the bus had been told to send money to a CashApp account that police linked to the 15-year-old’s parent. Staff at a Baltimore City elementary and middle school identified the teen in an MTA armed robbery wanted poster as the person in the “distinctive” sweatshirt, police wrote.

Police have not recovered the handgun used in McKenzie’s shooting, according to charging documents.

Ertel, who represents the Rodgers Forge area, said he was glad police arrested one of the suspects in the armed robbery and hopes a judge takes the case seriously.

He said many of his constituents were particularly alarmed that the attack happened in the middle of the day, making it feel like something that could happen to anyone and thus more “traumatic.”

“It could’ve happen in Parkville, it could’ve happen in Pikesville, it could’ve happened anywhere,” he said.

After a high-profile beating of a 66-year-old man near Patterson Park in Baltimore, some Baltimore-area residents and politicians have criticized the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services for releasing some teenagers accused of crimes to their guardians after arrest. Last week, the state agency said it would begin mandatory electronic monitoring of children accused of violent crimes who aren’t detained.

“It’s a story we hear too many times, someone that’s been victimized by a juvenile,” Ertel said Wednesday. “I just hope that the justice system starts taking stuff like this seriously.”

Ryan Coleman, president of the Randallstown NAACP, said the Rodgers Forge shooting shows that crime and violence isn’t something that only impacts poor, Black neighborhoods — and that it’s something that the county as a whole must work to address together.

“The narrative is that it only affects poor or Black neighborhoods. No, it affects us all,” he said. “Let’s not wait until it happens in Towson.”

Donations to a GoFundMe to raise money for McKenzie’s surgeries and to help his family have surpassed $131,000, as of Wednesday. Neighbors and police participated in a community walk in his honor on Sept. 24.

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