In the late hours of a September evening in 2017, a chain of events set in motion by a devastating loss would culminate in another tragedy on Salem Avenue in Hagerstown, Maryland. Anthony Wayne Mazingo, a 48-year-old male resident of Hagerstown, was shot twice in the head on September 24, 2017. He succumbed to his injuries two days later at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
The investigation into Mazingo's death led authorities to Clarence Warren Broussard, III.
Broussard had attended the viewing for his cousin earlier that same evening. Following the viewing, he received what was described as an extremely upsetting phone call. Believing that Mazingo was involved in his cousin's death, Broussard, accompanied by his girlfriend and her daughter, drove to Salem Avenue. There, the fatal encounter with Mazingo took place.
A month after the shooting, on October 25, 2017, an arrest warrant was issued for Broussard, charging him with first-degree murder and related offenses. He was subsequently arrested and stood trial in the Circuit Court for Washington County. The jury ultimately acquitted Broussard of the more severe charges of first and second-degree murder.
Despite the acquittal on the murder charges, Broussard was not absolved of all wrongdoing in connection with the death of Anthony Mazingo. The jury found him guilty of first-degree assault. For this conviction, he was sentenced to the maximum term of 25 years in prison, bringing a complex and somber legal chapter to a close, forever linking the fates of two families by a thread of violence and loss.
