In the early hours of a June morning in 2016, the life of 13-year-old Diandre Barnes was tragically cut short on the 900 block of Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore. A male victim of a shooting, he was rushed to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center where he was pronounced dead. It was later determined that Barnes was not the intended target of the violence that erupted that day; he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Another individual, believed to be the actual target, was also injured in the incident.
Two days after the fatal shooting, authorities located a suspect, Anthony Clark Jr. When confronted by police, Clark fled, firing a weapon at the pursuing officers before barricading himself on a rooftop on Fremont Avenue, where he eventually surrendered. A search of his home uncovered a. 40-caliber handgun that matched the bullet that killed Diandre Barnes. Clark, who also went by the nickname 'Trouble,' was charged with second-degree murder and firearm use during a felony-violent crime in connection to Barnes's death.
In 2018, Anthony Clark Jr. was found guilty and sentenced to 90 years in prison. However, an appeal was filed based on issues with inadmissible hearsay in a detective's testimony and a violation of Clark's confrontation rights. This led to Maryland's Court of Special Appeals granting him a new trial. By the time of his retrial in July 2022, Clark had legally changed his name to Malik Shakur. During the retrial, the prosecution presented its case, arguing that while Barnes was not the intended victim, he was killed by a deliberately planned shot. The defense, however, contended that Shakur was the wrong suspect.
