On a summer night in Mechanicsville, Maryland, a house party turned deadly, forever altering the lives of two families. Cody Michael Lacey, a 21-year-old male, was fatally shot on July 25, 2015. The tragic event unfolded on Lavender Lane, where a gathering of young people was shattered by an act of violence that left one man dead and a community in shock.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, law enforcement identified 21-year-old Alan Michael Rangel as the primary suspect.
A warrant for his arrest was issued, and a manhunt ensued. For more than two days, Rangel remained at large. The search came to an end on July 27, 2015, when he was located and apprehended without incident in Jessup, Maryland, by the U.S. Marshals Service Task Force Fugitive Unit. At the time of his arrest, Rangel was in the company of 24-year-old Amanda Raye Hartmann, who was also taken into custody and charged with being an accessory after the fact to first-degree murder. The investigation also led to the arrests of two other individuals, Wade Joshua Braithwaite and Demetrius Jose Burks-Jeffrey, who were charged as accessories after the fact. A search of a residence in Lexington Park, where Braithwaite and Burks-Jeffrey were found, resulted in the recovery of a weapon.
The legal proceedings that followed brought some measure of closure to Cody Lacey's grieving family. In January 2016, a St. Mary's County jury found Alan Michael Rangel guilty of second-degree murder after a three-day trial. On April 14, 2016, a judge sentenced Rangel to 90 years in prison. In addition to the murder charge, seven other charges were factored into his lengthy sentence. Wade Joshua Braithwaite, initially charged as an accessory, pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm with a felony conviction.
