An 18-year-old named Yoel Christ Tie is facing charges in the fatal shooting of a Beltsville man earlier in the month in Silver Spring, officials said. Tie was apprehended last Thursday by Montgomery County Police officers working alongside the U.S. Marshals Task Force, after being identified as a suspect in the Briggs Chaney Road homicide that occurred on January 8, according to a police release.
The incident that led to the arrest unfolded at around 7:45 p.m., when 3rd District officers and Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service responded to reports of a shooting. At the scene, the officers discovered 43-year-old Gavin St. Aubyn Boothe lying in the roadway with multiple gunshot wounds. Boothe's injuries proved fatal, and he was pronounced dead at the scene, his life extinguished as abruptly as if snuffed by a cruel and impersonal wind.
Investigators reviewing surveillance video captured the victim in what looked to be a verbal exchange with two unknown males just moments before he was shot. The Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner later concluded that Boothe died from the gunshot wounds, confirming the case as a homicide. Major Crimes detectives, no longer in search of a second suspect, centered their investigation on Tie, whom they pinpointed from the recorded footage. Subsequently, detectives secured an arrest warrant for Tie on charges of second-degree murder and felony use of a firearm during a violent crime.
With the warrant in hand, police took no chances and quickly cornered Tie at his Gaithersburg apartment to see justice served. He now awaits a bond hearing set for January 26. Further details of the case remain scant, but with Tie's custody, Montgomery County authorities are perhaps a step closer to unravelling the truth behind this brutal instance of urban violence that has stripped yet another community of its sense of safety and tranquility.
