A Baltimore jury has awarded $4.1 million to the family of a man who was shot and killed in 2022 by a security guard at a Royal Farms in Southwest Baltimore.
With its verdict Tuesday, the jury found security guard Kanisha Spence and her employer, Maximum Protective Services Security Investigations, LLC, culpable in the wrongful death of 26-year-old Marquise Powell.
“The jury determined that not only did Ms. Spence unlawfully shoot and kill Marquise, but that Maximum failed to properly train her, failed to properly vet her background, and never should have hired her or continued to employ her,” said attorneys Andrew O’Connell, Malcolm Ruff, Ronald Richardson and Nikoletta Mendrinos, who represented Powell’s estate, in a statement.
Spence shot Powell in the face in the vestibule of the Royal Farms during a verbal altercation in the early morning of Oct. 30, 2022. Powell died at the University of Maryland Shock Trauma six days after being shot at the store, located in the 1800 block of Washington Boulevard, which is in Baltimore’s Carroll Park neighborhood.
Reached by phone, an attorney for Maximum Protective Services declined to comment on the jury’s verdict. An attorney for Spence did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A separate Baltimore jury in August found Spence guilty of second-degree murder and use of a firearm in a crime of violence. A judge in February sentenced her to 60 years in prison, the maximum penalty. Online court records show Spence, 45, appealed her conviction.
Spence also entered an Alford plea — maintaining her innocence but acknowledging the prosecution had enough evidence to win a conviction — to making a false statement on an application to purchase a firearm and perjury for making a false statement on an application to law enforcement for the permit to carry the gun.
Powell was one of several people shot by security guards in Baltimore around the same time, serving as an impetus for Maryland lawmakers last year to overhaul state oversight of the once sparsely regulated industry of private security. A law that increased the number of security guards in Maryland who are required to be licensed, trained and covered by insurance took effect June 1.
Previously, only guards who worked for private security companies, like Spence, had to be licensed by Maryland State Police. Guards employed directly by the likes of grocery stores and retailers weren’t required to obtain licenses. There were no training requirements for security guards of any kind, unless they applied to carry a handgun, a process that requires safety courses for anyone who seeks such a license.
Around 2:45 a.m. on Oct. 30, 2022, Powell, his sister and girlfriend stopped at the Royal Farms to buy some chicken and refuel their car after going to a bar following a family Halloween party. Powell and Spence got into a verbal altercation after Spence told his sister the store’s bathroom was closed to customers.
As Powell’s argument with Spence continued, his girlfriend and sister intervened, pulling him out of the store. He struggled with them in the glass vestibule.
A photo included in the family’s wrongful death lawsuit depicts Spence making a taunting gesture to Powell.
The image was captured shortly before Spence pulled open the door to the vestibule, stepped toward Powell and fired one shot, security footage played during Spence’s murder trial showed.
Powell collapsed immediately after being shot in close proximity to his sister and girlfriend, who could be heard screaming in the background of Spence’s call to 911 reporting the shooting, which was also played at her trial.
“I’m a security guard at Royal Farms,” Spence told the operator. “A guy came towards me. I got a body camera on me. He was threatening my life.”
As Spence calmly spoke to the 911 operator, expressing little concern for Powell, a Royal Farms employee applied pressure to his head wound.
The bullet Spence fired struck Powell in the mouth, injured his cerebral vertebrae and damaged the artery that carries oxygen to the brain — which within a day caused his brain to stop functioning — before lodging in the back of his neck, according to a medical examiner who testified at Spence’s murder trial.
At trial, Spence claimed she acted in self defense.
Alleging battery, assault, negligent hiring, negligent security and overall negligence, the wrongful death lawsuit said Powell was a father to a young daughter, a beloved brother and son.
“There is a lot wrong with our judicial system, but, fundamentally, it is designed to render justice,” reads the statement from Powell’s family’s attorneys, who are from the firm Murphy, Falcon & Murphy. “We commend the members of the jury for allowing justice to prevail because the facts of this case cried out for it.”
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