By Andrew Brock
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Two separate incidents in February 2025 have led to a combination of Howard County schools being placed on lockdown, one person killed, and one more person in critical condition.
The first incident occurred on Feb. 18, when gunfire was reported shortly after noon in the Harper’s Farm Road and Cedar Lane area. This led to many of the schools in the area being put on lockdown while officers responded to the reports. After an investigation, they found shell casings in the Harper’s Farm Road and Beaverkill Road area. They also had a continued police presence at the schools when they were dismissed for the day. On Feb. 20, they arrested a suspect who was caught on video carrying a gun shortly after the gunshots were reported, but his name has yet to be reported. Public information officer Seth Hoffman of the Howard County
Police Department said in a statement that “The incident was targeted and not a random shooting.”
The following Saturday, on Feb. 22 at 5:54 p.m., reports of gunshots in the parking lot of the Lidl located near the Columbia Mall. When the police got to the scene, they found two victims that had been shot. One victim, Michael Robertson, 16, was pronounced dead when the police arrived. In contrast, the second victim, 15-year-old Blake McCray, died on Sunday, Mar. 3. The police arrested an 18-year-old man named Emmetson Zeah and charged him with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and other related charges.
As the incident unfolded, Neal Wilson, who was working at Lidl at the time, said, “I told the manager I wanted to go home, and then I left because I wasn’t feeling safe, and I couldn’t see out of the window because it was dark.”
No comment has been made on whether there was a bail set for the suspect in the first incident. Zeah, however, was denied bail at his first court appearance on Monday. In response to these events, a parent and Howard County Public School teacher Adam Balasundaram, said
“My overall thought as a parent of an HCPSS student about the events that occurred last week is that they should have never happened. I’m highly disappointed in what our community is coming to.”