BALTIMORE — Police from Baltimore County and the city failed to execute a search warrant at the home of a city teenager until a day after he allegedly killed someone, even though it had been issued four days before the homicide.
Baltimore County Police already were looking for the Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School student who they suspected in an armed robbery Jan. 6 at a Wendy’s in Parkville, but planning, scheduling issues and overtime concerns with city police delayed the execution of the search warrant that resulted in his arrest.
County police secured a so-called no-knock warrant four days before the Jan. 25 killing of James Blue III, a veteran Amtrak conductor and husband of a Baltimore Police Department lieutenant, but plans to use it weren’t finalized until Jan. 24.
Sahiou Kargbo, 18, has since been charged with the homicide.
The county and city police departments said “necessary planning and coordination work,” and overtime constraints meant they couldn’t immediately carry out the raid on Kargbo’s Northeast Baltimore home until Jan. 26.
County police sought the warrant after connecting Kargbo with the Jan. 6 Wendy’s robbery. County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger signed the warrant Jan. 20 and a judge approved it the following day.
By that time, county police had already contacted their city counterparts to get the help of Baltimore SWAT to execute the warrant at Kargbo’s city home on Northwick Road.
But after the warrant was signed by the judge, Baltimore police asked that day to delay serving the search warrant until Jan. 26 “due to leave days being changed at last minute,” county police spokeswoman Joy Stewart said in an email to the Baltimore Sun.
Stewart added that Saturday and Sunday were leave days for the Baltimore County robbery officers and Monday was a leave day for Baltimore City SWAT.
As a result, plans for the raid weren’t finalized until Monday, Jan. 24, due to “necessary planning and coordination work, both internal and with Baltimore City Police,” Stewart said in the email.
Baltimore Police were unavailable to execute the warrant the following day. That’s the same day Blue was killed just before 3 p.m. as he sat in his car outside a rowhouse he was renovating in the 1400 block of Walker Avenue while talking to his son.
It wasn’t until 4 a.m. the next day that police executed the search warrant and arrested Kargbo, who was found at the home along with two handguns. Baltimore police later said one of the guns, a Glock, was identified as being used in the shooting of Blue.
Police also said they connected Kargbo to the slaying through witnesses and surveillance video from the neighborhood. Video showed Kargbo leave Mergenthaler, also in Northeast Baltimore, just before they say he fatally shot Blue, according to charging documents.
The murder charges against Kargbo related to Blue’s shooting were announced Feb. 3.
Baltimore police Detective Donny Moses, a police spokesman, said county police could have executed the search warrant by themselves.
The city Police Department said the warrant regarding the robbery in Parkville did not meet its standards for using overtime.
“The circumstances didn’t meet the criteria to call them in on overtime,” said Detective Chakia Fennoy, a city police spokeswoman. “Baltimore County and SWAT supervisors agreed to execute the warrant on SWAT’s next date of availability.”
Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison has instituted policies to rein in the department’s expensive overtime costs, limiting the amount of overtime officers can work and requiring a supervisor’s approval. The department has also ended a long-standing practice of allowing officers on vacation to work extra duty shifts at pay rates of time-and-a-half or more.
A Sun investigation showed that many city officers had racked up tens of thousands of dollars in overtime amid ongoing staffing shortages at the department, with five officers each logging more than 2,000 hours of overtime in a single year.
Police have not given a motive as to why Blue was killed. The head of the Baltimore Police Public Integrity Bureau, where Blue’s wife is assigned, said previously that investigators do not believe Blue was targeted because of his wife’s work.
His family did not respond to a request for comment about the timeline of the warrant.
Kargbo, identified as a member of the Harford & 28th gang, also had an arrest warrant filed against him Dec. 28 in Baltimore for a firearms discharging that occurred Nov. 5, county police wrote in charging documents in the Wendy’s robbery case.
Moses said the department’s Warrant Apprehension Task Force prioritizes felony warrants. The warrant issued for Kargbo in the November handgun case is a misdemeanor.
Last week, Mayor Brandon Scott met with Gov. Larry Hogan to discuss violent crime in Baltimore. In a Feb. 4 letter to Hogan, Scott sought additional state funding for several initiatives to curb crime, including funding for the department’s Warrant Apprehension Task Force. Two detectives from that task force were shot while serving a warrant in August.
The additional funding, the mayor said, would help with overtime, and aid the Baltimore police and surrounding jurisdictions’ departments in prioritizing offenders committing violent crime.
It’s not clear why county police wanted a no-knock warrant, but Stewart said the “circumstances surrounding this investigation met the criteria for a no-knock search warrant.” Such warrants allow police to enter without having to announce themselves, even briefly, before going through a door.
The practice has faced greater scrutiny after several high-profile deaths across the country where individuals not targeted by the police executing the warrants have been killed or injured, such as Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2020.
Sweeping police reforms passed by the Maryland Legislature last year included limits on when police departments can use no-knock warrants and require law enforcement agencies to report to the state how often they are used.
Between July 28 and Dec 31, Baltimore Police detectives reported getting 15 no-knock warrants. So far in 2022, detectives have reported obtaining two, the department said.
City Councilwoman Odette Ramos, whose district includes the high school known as Mervo, where Kargbo was a student, said “it’s clear we need some help serving these warrants.”
But Ramos also questioned what factors would lead a teen to allegedly commit such violence.
“I just wonder what was happening with the young person that he was moving in this direction, if he was going through something, and how he got the gun,” she said. “How should we have responded earlier, not just in December when the warrant was issued. Were there warning signs?”
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