A 19-year-old shot twice in a Northwest Baltimore rowhouse told police from his hospital bed, “I want to kill him, that’s who shot me,” after being shown a photo of the man now standing trial for attempted murder. Nearly nine months later, that same certainty grew far murkier once Desmond Wilson took the stand in Baltimore City Circuit Court, where jurors began deliberating Thursday afternoon in the case against 19-year-old Delvon Bryant.
Bryant is charged with attempted first-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault and weapons offenses stemming from a shooting and attempted robbery on the 3000 block of Ridgewood Avenue on December 9, 2025. According to Baltimore Witness, prosecutors allege Bryant and mutual friends lured Wilson to an abandoned building, where Bryant drew a gun while climbing the stairs and told him, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” before shooting him twice. Wilson was taken to a second-story room and shot in the wrist, prosecutors said, before calling 911 himself.
Baltimore Police Department records show officers were dispatched to the 3000 block of Ridgewood Avenue at 7:42 p.m. for a reported shooting and found an 18-year-old male victim with a gunshot wound — an account that lines up closely with the timeline prosecutors described in court. Court records reviewed by Baltimore Witness noted that initial police releases described the injury as a wound to the hand before later clarifying it as trauma to the left wrist.
A Foot Chase and a Recovered Handgun
Nearby officers responding to the 911 call reportedly saw Bryant fleeing roughly one minute after being notified, according to the prosecution’s account relayed by Baltimore Witness. Police records indicate responding officers initially detained a person of interest at the scene before Northwest District Action Team officers apprehended Bryant following a brief foot chase into a nearby alley. Charging documents cited by the outlet state that arresting officers recovered a .22-caliber handgun loaded with eight cartridges just a few feet from Bryant, whom Baltimore Police Department arrest records list as a Baltimore County resident.
Prosecutors have pointed to a blood trail that responding patrol officers observed on the home’s front porch, which they say led up to the second-floor room where two shell casings were later recovered, according to court records reported by the outlet. The prosecution has argued Bryant intended to rob Wilson and later threw away his gun as he fled.
Defense Challenges the State’s Evidence
Defense attorney Charles Paul has argued the state never conclusively tied any recovered weapon to his client, and that no scientific evidence, phone records, or forensic link to the weapon connected Bryant to the shooting, the outlet reported. Paul also noted that the lead detective on the case did not testify. In closing arguments, he focused on what he described as inconsistencies in the prosecution’s narrative and evidence, according to Baltimore Witness.
Wilson’s own account has shifted over the course of the case. He initially claimed two people were involved in the attempted robbery, and his medical records reportedly showed he was unemployed, though he separately claimed to work for Amazon. The tension between his emotional statement at the hospital — naming Bryant after being shown his photo — and his more ambiguous courtroom testimony became a central thread in closing arguments, per the outlet’s reporting.
Plea Talks Collapsed Before Trial
The case rarely reached a jury. Prosecutors offered Bryant a plea deal of 25 years with all but 10 suspended and five years of mandatory time without parole, which he rejected two weeks ago after the state declined his counter-offer of five years of active prison time, Baltimore Witness reported. The trial itself had already been delayed once, after prosecutors told Judge Lawrence Daniels in July that a key detective was unavailable to testify on the original date.
Closing arguments were ultimately delivered Thursday before Judge Anthony Vittoria in Baltimore City Circuit Court, with jury deliberations set to begin that afternoon. If convicted of attempted first-degree murder, Bryant faces up to life in prison under Maryland Criminal Law § 2-205; the lesser attempted second-degree murder charge carries a maximum of 30 years under Maryland Criminal Law § 2-206.
The Ridgewood Avenue block has seen violence before. In July 2025, five months before the shooting in this case, a 22-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy were both shot and arrived at a local hospital with gunshot wounds, according to Baltimore Witness reporting on that earlier incident. It remains a stretch of Northwest Baltimore that has drawn repeated police response over the past two years.
