LaCole Veronica Hines, a 17-year-old Black/African American female, was a new mother to a six-week-old baby boy in the summer of 2010. Her life was tragically cut short on August 9, 2010, in Landover, Maryland, a victim of gun violence. The events leading to her death were rooted in a custody dispute with her ex-boyfriend, 23-year-old Marcus Desmond Shipman. Weeks before the fatal shooting, on July 25, Shipman had threatened Hines with a gun.
This led to a felony arrest warrant being issued for him on a first-degree assault charge. However, in a critical failure of the system, the warrant was mistakenly filed with misdemeanor warrants and was never served by the Prince George's County Sheriff's Office. This oversight left Shipman free, with devastating consequences.
On that fateful August day, under the pretense of arranging to drop off their infant son, Shipman lured Hines to the 2600 block of Brightseat Road. As she was about to enter a liquor store, Shipman shot her at point-blank range. LaCole Hines was rushed to the hospital but succumbed to her injuries three days later, on August 12, 2010. The brazen daytime shooting, described by prosecutors as an "execution," sent shockwaves through the community and left a baby boy without his mother. The investigation quickly led to the arrest of Marcus Desmond Shipman, who was charged with first-degree murder. A second individual, 16-year-old Carl Andre Jones of Washington, D.C., was also arrested and charged with first-degree murder in connection with Hines' death.
The legal proceedings that followed brought a measure of justice for LaCole's family, though their grief was compounded by the knowledge that her death might have been prevented. In September 2011, after a trial in which the jury deliberated for about 90 minutes, Marcus Desmond Shipman was found guilty of first-degree murder and the use of a handgun in a crime of violence. The prior mishandled warrant, a point of significant anger and frustration for Hines' family, was not presented as evidence during the trial. On October 14, 2011, Shipman was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. While this brought a sense of closure for her loved ones, they remained adamant that the sheriff's department's failure to act on the earlier warrant was a direct contributor to the tragedy. Information regarding the disposition of the case against the second suspect, Carl Andre Jones, is not available in the online sources.
