Suspect jailed in shooting death

Lexwood killing leads to 1st-degree murder charge

Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010

A judge ordered Tuesday that Andrew Allen Carter remain jailed without bond on a charge of first-degree murder from the shooting death last weekend of another man in a Lexington Park neighborhood.

St. Mary's detectives report that federal marshals assisted them in locating the 24-year-old suspect on Monday morning at a residence in Baltimore. At the St. Mary's jail, court records indicate, Carter told a court commissioner that he lives in California's San Souci community.

"I'm just asking for a [pretrial release] bond so I can get things together," Carter said at Tuesday's court hearing, and he said he has a job at a KFC restaurant.

St. Mary's District Judge Christy Holt Chesser denied the suspect's request, noting that he conceivably could be given the death penalty if convicted of the capital offense in Saturday's death of Antonio Nathaniel Pollard Jr., 22, of Lexington Park.

"It depends on how your case goes what the penalty could be," Chesser said to Carter. "You're facing the most serious charge you can face, … with the most serious punishment imaginable. I don't feel that any bond is appropriate."

Shortly before 4:30 a.m. Saturday, law officers responding to an apartment on Lexwood Court found Pollard suffering from a gunshot wound to the head, detectives report. Pollard later died at a hospital.

Authorities are investigating whether a St. Mary's jail inmate had asked Pollard to check on the whereabouts of a girlfriend, whom Pollard found in Carter's company before he was shot in the eye during an ensuing argument, according to an official familiar with the investigation.

A charges application filed by St. Mary's detectives states that Carter was in the apartment with his friend Tierra L. Brooks when Pollard arrived, accompanied by Robert L. Thomas Jr. and Johnathan O. Nelson.

"The victim and defendant engaged in a verbal altercation stemming from previous tumultuous contacts," detective Cpl. William Ray wrote in the charges application. "Brooks left the residence, [while] witnesses Thomas and Nelson remained inside with the defendant and the victim as they continued arguing."

A witness in the apartment told police that the argument became heated as its participants were standing together in a small hallway, court papers state, and a witness heard the suspect "mutter something," followed by the sound of a single gunshot.

Pollard fell down, and Carter ran outside, "hiding between vehicles" before running toward Great Mills Road, the detective wrote in the charges application.

U.S. marshals from a Washington, D.C., area fugitive task force assisted St. Mary's detectives in locating Carter on Monday in Baltimore, the investigators report, and he was arrested there without incident and taken to St. Mary's jail in Leonardtown.

An earlier warrant for Carter's arrest was issued last June in Worcester County from an alleged violation of his probation from a 2004 attempted robbery charge in the Eastern Shore jurisdiction, where a judge had sentenced Carter the following year to serve five years in prison.

jwharton@somdnews.com