After more than five years and two trials, man acquitted in Owings Mills, murder, robbery
More than five years after a Westminster man was shot and killed inside a car in Owings Mills, a man accused of participating in his murder has been acquitted.
Karlton Wise, 31, was acquitted Friday of first-degree felony murder and robbery with a dangerous weapon in the March 31, 2021, shooting death of Moeed Asif, 24, in the 100 block of Willow Bend Drive.
Wise was accused of participating in the deadly robbery with Damon Tyler, who was previously convicted of murdering Asif. The Baltimore County jury returned its verdict after hearing three days of testimony.
Tyler was convicted in August 2022 of first-degree premeditated murder, first-degree felony murder, armed robbery and related offenses. He received a life sentence for murder, a consecutive 20-year sentence for a firearm offense and an additional 20 years for armed robbery.
According to his attorney, Catherine Woolley, Wise had no other pending cases. Following the acquittals, Circuit Judge Stacy Mayer ordered his release from custody. Woolley said Wise had been jailed continuously since his April 21, 2021, arrest — approximately five and a half years.
It was the second time Wise had faced a jury in the case. On Oct. 13, 2023, Mayer declared a mistrial after jurors deadlocked on the murder and robbery charges. The first jury acquitted Wise of use of a firearm in the commission of a violent crime, according to c court records.
“This was someone who got swept up in a nightmare,” Woolley told jurors in her opening statement. “And we need the nightmare to end.”
Asif was found fatally shot in the driver's seat of a Nissan Altima shortly after 9 p.m. He had been shot four times, and the car's trunk was open. His wife told police that two duffel bags or backpacks and a plastic shopping bag containing a large quantity of marijuana-infused THC gummies should have been in the trunk.
“This is more than just someone who just had a couple of gummies to sell,” Woolley said. “This is someone who really was engaged in the large-scale sale of gummies. It’s how he basically was supporting his entire extended family.”
Investigators determined that Asif had arranged through Snapchat to sell gummies to Tyler. Police alleged that Tyler shot Asif during the transaction and that he and Wise stole items from the car's trunk.
During a police interview, Wise acknowledged driving Tyler to the area but denied any involvement in the killing.
Woolley said Tyler was riding with Wise because Wise was selling his car and Tyler's sister was interested in seeing it. Wise told investigators that Tyler asked him to make a stop during the drive, and he assumed Tyler wanted to buy marijuana.
According to Wise's account, Tyler got out of the car and walked away. A short time later, Wise heard gunshots and ran toward the sound. He said he encountered Tyler running from the scene carrying a clear plastic bag.
“What’d you do? What’d you do?” Wise said he asked Tyler.
“Come on,” Tyler replied, according to Wise.
The two then got into Wise's car and drove away.
Much of the prosecution's case against Wise rested on testimony from a witness who said he heard gunshots and saw two people moving around Asif's car as though searching for something. The witness said the trunk opened and the two removed something before fleeing on foot.
Prosecutors also showed jurors dimly lit surveillance footage of a person getting into Asif's car and another person walking nearby toward a dead end moments earlier.
Deputy State's Attorney John Cox argued that the person entering the car was likely Tyler, while the person walking toward the dead end was probably Wise. Cox said Asif then drove in the direction the second person had walked, likely at Tyler's instruction.
“Karlton Wise was an active participant in all of this,” Cox said. “Karlton Wise at the very least knew exactly what had happened. He knew that a robbery had just happened, even if he didn’t know before, and he drove the killer away.”
Woolley challenged the witness's account, pointing to what she described as inconsistencies and the absence of DNA evidence linking Wise to items police recovered.
She emphasized that Tyler, not Wise, had arranged to buy the gummies and later attempted to sell them on Instagram.
Woolley also noted that the witness described hearing two people near the car speaking what sounded like a language other than English. Asif spoke both English and Urdu, and Woolley asked jurors to consider whether someone else might have been with him that night.
Investigators traced the Snapchat account used to arrange the transaction to Tyler. On April 14, 2021, police arrested Tyler outside a Family Dollar store and searched the Honda Civic he had been driving. Inside, they found a backpack belonging to Asif.
Surveillance footage from Tyler's residence also showed him returning home the day after the killing carrying a white Runtz backpack with purple lettering. DNA recovered from the backpack was consistent with Tyler's DNA.
In his closing argument, Cox also pointed to messages in which Tyler, while arranging to sell gummies, directed a prospective buyer to his “brother,” who would be driving a white Lexus. Cox noted that Wise was riding in a white Lexus when police arrested him.
