Man pleads guilty to killing deaf cellmate at Baltimore Central Booking in 2022 – Baltimore Sun

A Harford County man admitted Tuesday to strangling his deaf cellmate in a Baltimore jail two years ago while awaiting trial on charges stemming from a fatal stabbing.

Gordon Staron, 35, pleaded guilty on Oct. 9, 2022, to first-degree murder in the killing of Javarick Gantt, whose death angered advocates for incarcerated people with disabilities.

Gantt was being held without bail at the Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center pending trial on a domestic incident in which no one was seriously injured. He died a month before his 35th birthday and experts questioned why he was being housed with Staron, who was being held on murder charges.

The guilty plea came after a jury convicted Staron on Thursday of first-degree murder and carrying a dangerous weapon following a four-day trial in Baltimore Circuit Court in the Sept. 6, 2022, killing of 63-year-old Keith Bell.

At sentencing in both cases, scheduled for December 19, Staron faces a life sentence.

According to charging documents, guards found Gantt unresponsive in his cell around 6:30 a.m. on October 9, 2022. A Baltimore City Fire Department paramedic pronounced him dead 20 minutes later.

After an autopsy the next day, forensic pathologists from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore ruled Gantt's death a homicide by strangulation.

Investigators reviewed security footage from the state prison and determined that guards locked Gantt and Staron in their cell around 7:20 p.m. on Oct. 8, charging documents say. From that point on, no one entered the cell again until officers discovered Gantt was unresponsive the next morning.

Others detained in the cell block told investigators they heard Gantt overnight communicating using sign language and “making noises and knocking on his cell door.” According to court documents, Staron is a foot taller than Gantt and weighs about twice as much.

About a month before corrections officers discovered an unresponsive Gantt, Baltimore police received a call about an unresponsive man at a bus stop in the 1400 block of Monument Street. When officers arrived, they found Bell who appeared to have been stabbed multiple times.

According to charging documents, paramedics took Bell to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he died. The coroner's office classified Bell's death as a homicide by stabbing.

Homicide detectives reviewed CCTV footage from the area around the bus stop and determined that a Toyota Tacoma “with a prominent rear cover and reflective decal” fled the scene, charging documents say. License plate readers recorded the pickup's tag and showed it was registered to one of Staron's relatives, with whom he lived in Abingdon.

Before the suspect, a white male, returned to his truck, he wiped a “flat, shiny object” on his clothing and threw his shirt into a dumpster, according to charging documents.

Investigators wrote that Staron “matched the physical description of the suspect as seen on the CCTV footage.”

Harford County Sheriff's Office deputies arrested Staron on Sept. 8 after they saw him leaving his home armed with a shotgun and a pocket knife, according to charging documents.

Family members allegedly told investigators that he usually carried a straight-bladed knife with a brown and yellow handle, and investigators recovered one such weapon along with shoes that appeared to be stained with blood when they found one parked on Staron's property Searched vehicle.

This article is being updated.

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