On the evening of February 17, 2023, a sense of ordinary transit turned into a scene of violence aboard a Metro bus in White Oak, Maryland, resulting in the death of 19-year-old Justice T’Ziyan Elliott. That Friday, at approximately 7:40 p.m., Montgomery County police officers on patrol near the Vista at White Oak apartments noticed a WMATA Metro Bus stopped on Lockwood Drive and stopped to assist.
They discovered that a shooting had occurred inside the bus.
Elliott, a resident of Silver Spring, was seated in the back of the bus when another man boarded and confronted him. Following a verbal exchange, the man brandished a handgun and shot Elliott before fleeing the scene. Despite the life-saving efforts of the officers who arrived to find him removed from the bus, Justice T’Ziyan Elliott was pronounced dead at the scene. Initially, the suspect was described as a Black male with a thin build, approximately 5-feet 10-inches tall, wearing all black and a black face mask.
More than a year after the fatal shooting, an arrest was made in the case. On June 24, 2024, the Montgomery County Department of Police announced that 22-year-old Trevon Hatcherson-Ross of Washington, D.C., had been arrested and charged with the murder of Justice T’Ziyan Elliott. Hatcherson-Ross was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and reckless endangerment. He was extradited from a detention center in Washington, D.C., to the Montgomery County Central Processing Unit, where he was held without bond.
The legal process culminated in a conviction. In May 2025, a jury found Trevon Hatcherson-Ross, then 23, guilty of the first-degree murder of Justice Elliott. The trial revealed that the incident was captured on surveillance video. In addition to the murder charge, Hatcherson-Ross was also found guilty of attempted second-degree murder, two counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a violent crime, and reckless endangerment. He faces a potential sentence of two life sentences plus an additional 45 years in prison.
