On December 12, 2006, in Laurel, Maryland, Labria Fogle, a nine-month-old Black female, was killed in a shooting that also claimed the life of her mother, 22-year-old Lisa Laverne Brown. The violence unfolded inside the home where they were staying on Engleman Drive, in a neighborhood close enough to Eisenhower Middle School that the day around it still moved on in the usual rhythms of school hours.
Then the gunfire cut through, and by the time the scene came into focus, mother and baby were gone.
Investigators treated it as a targeted attack rather than a random break-in. Reports from the time described the lack of forced entry and pointed to a situation where the shooter either was let inside or already had access. The details that emerged painted a grim domestic backdrop: Brown had sought legal protection shortly before the killings, and the relationship tensions around the household were part of the story detectives tried to untangle. For the people who lived nearby, it was the kind of crime that made ordinary places feel suddenly unsafe—an upstairs room in a shared house, a weekday afternoon, a baby who should have been napping.
Law enforcement attention turned to Lawrence Banks, also known in later reporting as Malik Samartaney, a man with a long and violent criminal history. Accounts described him as connected to the household and as someone police questioned in the aftermath. Investigators reportedly explored ways to hold him on supervision issues while they worked the case, but no arrest followed for the killings of Brown and Labria. Over time, the case settled into that painful category where suspicion hangs heavy, but proof never lands hard enough in court.
Years later, Banks’ name resurfaced in headlines for other crimes, including a later homicide for which he was ultimately convicted and sentenced to a lengthy prison term. Those later proceedings renewed public attention on the 2006 double killing, because multiple reports noted that he had been a person of interest back then as well. Still, the record remained unchanged where Labria Fogle is concerned: despite the focus on him as a suspect, no one was formally charged in connection with her death, and the case has been described as unresolved.
