Carlos Alberto Perez Roque, a 24-year-old Hispanic/Latino man, was shot and killed on the night of December 7, 2014, after police were called to a home in the unit block of Haines Court in Owings Mills, Maryland. The call came in around 9:20 p.m., and when officers arrived they found him suffering from at least one gunshot wound. Medics were summoned, but he was pronounced dead at the scene before the night was over.
In the first hours of the investigation, detectives focused on the people already closest to the moment of violence. Authorities said they were questioning a person about what had happened inside the residence, trying to reconstruct how the evening turned from ordinary to fatal in a matter of seconds. Early public reports offered few details beyond the location and the urgency of the response, as investigators worked to separate rumor from fact and determine whose hands had been on the weapon.
Within two days, police publicly described the incident as a struggle over a handgun inside the Haines Court home. According to the Baltimore County Police account reported at the time, Roque and another man became entangled in a fight for control of the gun, and Roque was shot once in the upper body during that confrontation. The way it was presented in early reporting, it was not a drive-by or a stranger’s ambush, but a close-range, indoors encounter—an argument or conflict that collapsed into a wrestling match with a firearm at the center of it.
Police identified a suspect and made an arrest: Ramon Antoni B. Constanza, 31, of the same Haines Court block. Reports stated he was charged with second-degree murder and with using a firearm in the commission of a felony, and that he was held without bail at the Baltimore County Detention Center. The public narrative of the case, as described in contemporaneous coverage, moved quickly from “questioning a person” to formal charges, with detectives and prosecutors asserting that the struggle over the handgun ended with a single shot that took Roque’s life.
