A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiracy to commit first-degree assault in connection with a November 2024 shooting on West North Avenue that left a victim with gunshot wounds to both thighs, an elbow and the lower back. Donte Mack appeared before Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge John Addison Howard, who sentenced him to five years with all but two years suspended, followed by three years of probation.
The case traces back to November 11, 2024, when police received a ShotSpotter alert reporting a single round fired near the 2300 block of West North Avenue, according to Baltimore Witness. Officers dispatched to the block found no victim at the scene but recovered 16 spent 9mm shell casings along with a laser sight adapted for a firearm. Investigators were separately dispatched to Grace Medical Center, where a walk-in shooting victim had sought treatment — the same person struck during the North Avenue shooting.
According to the outlet's reporting, the victim and a witness told police that an unknown suspect approached their parked 2012 Acura and opened fire from the passenger side and rear of the vehicle. The driver then took the wounded victim to Grace Medical Center, a facility at 2000 W. Baltimore Street that LifeBridge Health acquired in 2019 after it operated for a century as Bon Secours Hospital. Surveillance cameras allegedly captured Mack and two other suspects arriving at the scene seconds before the shooting and making a U-turn after pulling up.
From Attempted Murder to a Guilty Plea
Mack was arrested on January 15, 2025, alongside co-defendants Keon Brooks, 19, and Justin Griggs, 18, with Baltimore Police originally charging all three with attempted first-degree murder, per the Baltimore Police Department. The plea entered Tuesday represents a significant reduction from that initial charge, reflecting a case that dragged through more than a year of custody, procedural fights and repeated changes to the charging documents before reaching resolution just ahead of an August 2026 trial date.
The path there was anything but straightforward. In February, Circuit Court Judge Hope Tipton granted a state motion to dismiss the attempted murder charges against Mack and Griggs — only for prosecutors to refile the same charges later that same day, a maneuver that drew objections from defense attorneys over the resulting trial delays, the outlet's report notes. Baltimore defense attorneys have separately raised concerns, as cited by the Maryland State Bar Association in 2024, that prosecutors citywide sometimes use dismissals and re-indictments to reset the speedy trial clock, a practice state's attorneys have defended as legitimate prosecutorial discretion.
A Speedy Trial Fight Under the Hicks Rule
By June, Mack's defense attorney, Christopher O'Meara, filed a motion to dismiss the re-indicted case, arguing it violated Maryland's 180-day speedy trial rule after Mack had remained in custody for over a year following his initial arrest, according to the same account from Baltimore Witness. That rule, known as the Hicks rule and codified under Maryland Code Criminal Procedure § 6-103 and Rule 4-271, requires circuit court criminal trials to begin within 180 days of a defendant's or defense counsel's initial appearance unless good cause for postponement is shown, per MarcusBonsib, LLC. Mack had made his initial court appearances back in March 2025, months before the original indictment was dropped.
The case's structure was complicated further in July 2025, when Judge Cynthia H. Jones granted a prosecution motion to consolidate the trials of Mack and co-defendant Keon Brooks for judicial economy, over defense objections that joint evidence could unfairly prejudice each defendant individually. Brooks' own proceedings faced repeated postponements in late 2025 as courts weighed whether his case should be transferred to juvenile court, since he was 19 at the time of his arrest but had unresolved juvenile matters pending from before the shooting.
Sentence Falls Well Short of Statutory Maximum
Under Maryland Criminal Law Code Section 3-202, first-degree assault is a felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison, and because it is classified as a crime of violence, those convicted must serve at least half their term before becoming eligible for parole, according to Scott MacMullan Law, LLC. Mack's five-year sentence, with all but two years suspended, falls well below that maximum. Senior Judge Howard, who accepted the plea and handed down the sentence, served as an associate judge on the Baltimore City Circuit Court from July 2006 until October 2016 before continuing his service as a retired senior judge, according to Ballotpedia.
Baltimore first reported the arrests of Mack, Brooks and Griggs in January 2025, when all three faced attempted first-degree murder charges for the West North Avenue shooting. It remains unclear from available records what final resolution, if any, has been reached in the separate cases against Brooks and Griggs.
