The Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office on Thursday finished presenting its case against a 16-year-old charged with first-degree murder and related offenses in the deadly shooting of a man who confronted a group of squeegee workers with a baseball bat near the Inner Harbor.

“The state would rest,” Assistant State’s Attorney Cynthia Banks told Baltimore Circuit Judge Jennifer B. Schiffer shortly before 2 p.m. after calling four final witnesses who outlined a trail of evidence that still left unconnected dots about how police identified the teen.

Schiffer adjourned the trial until Monday, which is when both sides are set to deliver their closing arguments. She stated that she would in the meantime consider whether the defense is permitted to simultaneously question the identification of its client and contend that the shooter acted in self-defense or defense of others.

The teen is accused of shooting and killing Timothy Reynolds, 48, of Hampden, at the intersection of Light and Conway streets, not far from Oriole Park at Camden Yards, on July 7, 2022. Reynolds was an engineer and a father of three.

The shooting sparked debate and policy changes related to squeegee workers in Baltimore. They are mostly young Black men who wash windows at intersections in the city in the hopes of receiving cash tips.

The Baltimore Banner is not identifying the teen because of his age. He was 14 at the time and a student at Digital Harbor High School.

Banks called 19 witnesses and played dash camera video and surveillance video of the fatal encounter to the jury. But it remains unclear how law enforcement discovered the name of the teen or established probable cause to obtain search and seizure warrants for his Instagram accounts and a home where his father and grandmother lived in Essex in Baltimore County.

Baltimore Police Detective Michael Curtin, the secondary homicide detective on the case, testified that he created a flyer with still photos from the surveillance video to see if any officers could identify the shooter.

Curtin got a response.

One day after the killing, Baltimore Police Officer Kevin Rivera testified, his partner showed him a picture of the shooter.

Rivera said he recognized the shooter but did not know his name. They had interacted with each other three days before the shooting on the Fourth of July on West Conway Street.

Prosecutors played Rivera’s body camera video showing that encounter to the jury. Rivera identified the teen in court as the person seen in the footage.

In court documents, Assistant State’s Attorney Rita Wisthoff-Ito previously wrote that school police officers and personnel were shown the still photos and identified the teen. None of them, though, were called as witnesses at trial.

Police found a backpack in the area that contained a 9mm handgun with one cartridge in the chamber and 11 cartridges in the magazine.

An expert in DNA analysis, Christa Wheeler, testified that there was a mixture of DNA from at least three people on the strap of the backpack. The teen, she said, was a match.

“It’s not a strong match,” Wheeler testified. “I’ve seen better matches.”

The bullets and cartridge casings found near the intersection were consistent with being fired from the gun, said Daniel Lamont, a firearms examiner.

But there were also credit cards in the name of a different person in the bag. Sean Dorr, a latent print examiner, testified that he matched fingerprints lifted from a water bottle collected from the scene to that individual.

Dorr said there was nothing suitable for latent fingerprint examination on the gun.

In other testimony, Baltimore Police Detective John Amato, the primary homicide detective on the case, discussed his investigation.

He faced questions on cross-examination from Warren Brown, one of the teen’s attorneys, about whether police looked into why Reynolds confronted the squeegee workers.

“I was more concerned about who pulled the trigger,” Amato testified. “It wouldn’t have changed our decision to charge him with anything,” he later added.

Reynolds was walking away from the intersection when squeegee workers followed him, Amato testified. He said the teen broke off to pick up a backpack with a gun inside it, retreated again to cover his face and then came back.

At the same time, Amato acknowledged, a bat can be a deadly weapon. He agreed that the only shots that were fired that afternoon came after Reynolds swung the bat.

Amato described the backpack as a “community bag” that all the squeegee workers could access. He said he was not sure who brought it to the area.

Surveillance cameras, he said, did not capture squeegee workers damaging Reynolds’ SUV. Amato said he could only offer assumptions for what led to the confrontation.

“Yeah,” Amato said. “I was always curious.”

“Still curious?” Brown asked.

“Sure,” Amato replied.

dylan.segelbaum@thebaltimorebanner.com