Closing Arguments: Jury Weighs Fate of Baltimore Man Accused in Deadly Towson Apartment Fire

TOWSON — Dana Hunt might be an obsessive man, but he’s not an arsonist and he’s not a killer, his defense attorney said during closing arguments at his murder trial Tuesday.

Prosecutors painted a starkly different picture of the 45-year-old Baltimore man accused of pouring gasoline and starting a deadly apartment fire in Towson on August 25, 2024.

Hunt was a stalker, Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Fuller told jurors — a man who couldn’t let go of his ex-girlfriend and who lied repeatedly about his whereabouts and actions the night an apartment fire killed her neighbor, 43-year-old René Lorenzo Trejo.

Attorneys presented their final arguments Tuesday afternoon in Baltimore County Circuit Court after five days of testimony. Jury deliberations are set to begin this morning.

The defense maintains the fire was not arson but likely an accident.

“What evidence do we have that Mr. Dana Hunt started the fire?” defense attorney J. Wyndal Gordon asked jurors. “There is none. There’s no eyewitness testimony. No surveillance.”

Hunt did not testify. The defense called a single witness, James Brown, who told the jury he and Hunt were both injured at a dirt bike gathering the week before the fire when a rider lost control while popping a wheelie. He said the bike landed on Hunt, burning him.

Prosecutors argued the burns on Hunt’s calf, ankle, and arm came from setting the fire.

“Those burns are not from a dirt bike. That is not some magic muffler,” Fuller said.

HISTORY OF HARASSMENT

Hunt had been showing up unexpectedly at places where Shaquoia Johnson and her girlfriend were in the months preceding the fire. The defense conceded he had secretly kept tabs on Johnson’s car using two GPS trackers.

Johnson testified that she moved twice to get away from Hunt.

The night before the fire at the Loch Raven Village Apartments on Greenway Road, Hunt showed up at an IHOP where Johnson and her girlfriend were eating — an encounter that rattled the women enough to call police.

The following night, prosecutors say, Hunt ignited a trail of gasoline leading up the stairs of the building to Johnson’s second-floor apartment door.

Johnson wasn’t home at Unit C, but the Trejo family, who lived next door in Unit D, was.

Lorenzo Trejo woke his wife and alerted her to the midnight blaze, she testified Wednesday. Prosecutor Fuller called him a hero who saved two of his children by tossing them from a window — but who couldn’t save himself.

Trejo’s wife and youngest child escaped through a bathroom window.

Dr. Jack Titus, assistant medical examiner with the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, testified Monday Trejo died from smoke inhalation and thermal injuries.

⸻

TWO PHONES, TWO CARS

Hunt owned two cell phones but told police about only one, according to testimony. On the night of the fire, he left his primary phone in his blue Acura and swapped cars with his then-girlfriend, Salena Aikens, at her salon.

“Why leave his primary phone in his car for Salena Aikens to drive?” Fuller asked jurors.

Hunt told police he and Aikens went straight to her home in the city that night, but surveillance footage showed Aikens alone in his car, stopping at a convenience store.

Cell-phone data and neighborhood cameras placed Hunt near the fire scene around the time investigators believe the blaze began, according to the prosecution. The defense suggested Hunt might have been at a nearby bar or hookah lounge.

An ATF analysis found gasoline in three of 17 debris samples from the scene. Gordon noted that most samples were negative, while Fuller countered that gas often evaporates, burns away, or is diluted by water during firefighting.

Gordon told jurors the prosecution’s case was “all conjecture, all speculation.”

“If your heart tells you he did it, but the facts don’t show it, that’s not the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt,” Gordon said.

————