State of Maryland v. Sahiou Kargbo

Baltimore, Maryland criminal defense lawyer represented Defendant charged with second-degree murder.



Sahiou Kargbo, age 19, shot and killed James Blue, III in 2022.



Barely 18 at the time of the shooting, Kargbo opened fire on Blue in the 1400 block of Walker Avenue in Northeast Baltimore around 2:40 p.m. that day. Blue, a 43-year-old Amtrak conductor and father of three, was in his car talking to his son on the phone while waiting for a refrigerator to be delivered to a home he and his wife were renovating in the Idlewood neighborhood of North Baltimore.



Ten of the 14 bullets Kargbo fired tore into Blue, injuring his head, neck and spine. He died at the Johns Hopkins Hospital about an hour after the shooting.



Defendant admitted that he shot and killed the victim but claimed that he shot him in self defense.



"There's no way what the defendant tried to sell you actually happened,” LaPolla told jurors.



Apart from Kargbo's testimony, there was no evidence of an altercation preceding the fatal shooting.



A city firearms examiner testified all 14 cartridge casings collected from the crime scene were fired by a handgun that Baltimore County police, investigating an unrelated armed robbery, confiscated from Kargbo's house the day after Blue's killing.



Kargbo's IQ tested in the second or third percentile, meeting the criteria for diagnosing an intellectual disability, Culotta said. Despite being close to graduating from high school, Kargbo read, wrote and did math at a fourth or fifth grade level.



Kargbo, who emigrated with his mother from Gambia as a child, held a job boxing orders at Amazon and went to school. He rented a stolen car from a man on the street and obtained two handguns and an extended "drum” magazine capable of holding 50 rounds.

Defendant was found guilty of second-degree murder and faces more than of 40 years in prison.

Dr. Vincent Culotta, a neuropsychologist