A 29-year-old Baltimore man walked away from an attempted first-degree murder charge just before his trial was set to begin, after his defense team discovered that the sole eyewitness who identified him as the shooter was incarcerated at the time of the crime. Raequan Allen had faced a stack of felony counts stemming from an August 2025 shooting that left a man with two gunshot wounds, but all of those charges were dropped on Friday.
A Gas Station Walk Turns Into a Shooting
According to Baltimore Witness, police were notified that a gunshot victim had arrived at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center on Aug. 16, 2025. The victim told officers he had just left a gas station when he spotted someone on a bicycle coming out of an alley on North Conklin Street. He said he heard gunshots while watching someone walking behind him, and he was struck in the leg and back. As he and bystanders ran, surveillance footage reportedly captured gunshots ricocheting off the street.
The victim told police he presumed the person on the bicycle was involved because, in his view, no one else could have fired the shots. Surveillance video reviewed in the case showed the victim standing in the alley as a male wearing jeans and a white shirt rode a bicycle into it, followed by a second male in a dark-colored shirt who also entered by bicycle and rode back out several seconds later. A nearby camera reportedly captured a clearer image of the bicycle-riding suspect, who was described as wearing a white shirt and distressed jeans with distinctive sideburns and was seen walking near the intersection roughly two minutes before the shooting. The two suspects were described as one wearing a white T-shirt and the other wearing a strap or fanny pack.
An Identification That Fell Apart
A Baltimore Police Department detective allegedly identified the male in the surveillance video as Allen, per the Baltimore Witness report, and a witness allegedly identified Allen as the shooter after viewing a photo array on March 24. Those identifications formed the backbone of a case that charged Allen with attempted first-degree murder, first-degree assault, reckless endangerment, firing and discharging a gun, and multiple handgun and firearm possession counts.
Allen appeared before Judge Dana Middleton on Sept. 25, telling the court the incident stemmed from his previous drug addiction. His defense attorney, Staci Pipken, had told the outlet in September that an investigator in the case was expected to provide more information the following week, according to a NewsBreak report at the time. That investigator, hired by Pipken, went on to gather two separate witness statements that identified a different individual as the suspect, the Baltimore Witness report states.
Case Dismissed Before Trial
Ultimately, newly found information showed the sole eyewitness identifying Allen had actually been incarcerated at the time of the shooting, leading to the dismissal of all charges against him before his scheduled trial, per the same report. Allen was on probation for a prior offense, and he is now scheduled for a violation of probation hearing at 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 13.
The collapse of Allen's case echoes another recent Baltimore prosecution that fell apart over witness trouble. In a separate case detailed by Baltimore Witness, the state dismissed all charges in June against 19-year-old Maliq Shelman after prosecutors said they could not locate an essential eyewitness. Prosecutors told Judge Anthony F. Vittoria they believed that witness was deliberately avoiding testimony, and the report noted the technology the state had used to track the witness's location had reportedly stopped working. As with Shelman's case, where the state can refile charges if it chooses, Allen's dismissal does not necessarily close the book on the matter for good.
