A Baltimore County man was arrested and charged Thursday with a double homicide in the death of two women found dead inside their Middle River home.
Bryan Demetric Cherry, 36, was charged Thursday with two counts of first-degree murder and is being held without bond. An attorney was not immediately listed in online court records.
Officers from the Essex precinct were called to a home on Taos Circle off Pawnee Road for a welfare check around 9:50 a.m. on July 7. Upon arrival, police said, officers found the bodies of the women with “apparent trauma to the upper body.”
Police identified victims as Autumn Harvey, 29, and her grandmother, Iona Sellers, 75. The two women were pronounced dead at the scene.
Officers had entered the home and announced their presence but received no response. Police said they found a rear sliding glass door was unlocked and went in.
Harvey was found dead on her bed “with numerous stab wounds to her head, shoulder and neck area,” while Sellers’ body was found with a blunt-force trauma head injury in a second-floor bedroom, according to charging documents.
Police saw that a side window at the home was partially open with a plastic lawn chair seated just below the window, “giving the appearance that entry had been made through the window.” They found a cigarette butt and submitted it for forensic testing.
A man was seen on camera at a Royal Farms stealing a drink from the store on Middle River Road at 3:20 a.m. on July 6, police said. After canvassing the area near Pawnee Drive and Middle River Road, officers found the same man walking along Middle River Road just after 5 a.m. before walking onto Pawnee Road in the direction of Taos Circle.
Officers noted that the home on Taos Circle is approximately a two-minute walk from the Royal Farms Store, according to charging documents.
On July 9, Cherry used Sellers’ credit card at places in Baltimore City, including a Walgreens located at 900 N. Washington Blvd. and a Dollar General located at 929B N. Carolina St., police said, and they obtained footage of Cherry using Sellers’ credit card from both places.
Police also said a man used Sellers’ credit card to pay for a prescription. After tracing that prescription to a woman, they found out she was associated with Cherry, according to the charging documents.
Police responded to the Dollar General and found Cherry wearing white Adidas shoes and carrying a green book bag that matched what the man on camera was wearing the morning of Harvey’s and Sellers’ death, according to the charging documents.
County police said a DNA match had been obtained from the cigarette butt recovered at the crime scene, and soon learned Cherry had been arrested Baltimore City on July 14 for an unrelated homicide, according to the charging documents.
Previous arrest photographs of Cherry confirmed to police that he was the person in the Royal Farms video and utilizing Sellers’ credit card, police said.
Cherry was also charged Thursday with attacking and killing 38-year-old Sierra Johnson in the 800 block of Abbott Court on July 14. He’s charged with first-degree murder in Johnson’s death.
Cherry is scheduled to appear in Baltimore City Circuit Court on Sept. 9 on charges of attempted first-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder.
Harvey’s mother, Robin Spring Saunders Coleman, died June 27, 2021, almost three years to the day before the homicides.
Police were alerted that something was amiss at the house when one of Harvey’s closest friends, Ali Favaro, hadn’t heard from her by mid-morning on the day the bodies were found. A mutual friend called police, triggering a welfare check and the discovery of the attack at the house.
“I knew something was wrong,” Favaro said. “I hear from her every day by 9 a.m., every single day, even if it’s about something stupid, ‘I’m wearing a purple dress today.’”
This story may be updated.
