Defense Claims Former Student Feared for His Life in Retrial Over Killing of Baltimore Educator

“I caught a body.”

That’s what prosecutors said Zayeed Abdul-Muhaimin texted his then-girlfriend after shooting and killing his former teacher, Shelton Stanley, on Dec. 27, 2020, at Stanley’s Pikesville home.

Abdul-Muhaimin, 28, admitted during his first trial in 2022 that he shot Stanley, 36, but testified that he acted in self-defense. A jury convicted him of second-degree murder, and he was sentenced to 35 years in prison. A state appellate court overturned the conviction in 2024, ruling that potential jurors should have been asked about their views on firearms.

Stanley was an assistant principal at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Baltimore City when he died. Abdul-Muhaimin was 23 and a senior at the University of Baltimore.

Assistant State’s Attorney Zarena Sita told jurors in opening statements Wednesday that Stanley, who also went by his middle name, Justin, had been in “an active sexual relationship” with Abdul-Muhaimin in 2020, when the defendant was 22 years old. She said Abdul-Muhaimin had stayed with Stanley at various times since he was a teenager.

Sita said Abdul-Muhaimin shot Stanley multiple times with a shotgun and went to great lengths to cover up the killing, dumping Stanley's passport, work ID and birth certificate, along with his car, at a hotel in Timonium. She said he took Stanley's phone, guns, and bank cards and transferred money out of Stanley’s bank account before taking a one-way flight to San Diego, where police caught up with him a few days later.

“Less than two days after he murdered Justin, the defendant got on a plane and literally ran away,” Sita said.

She asked jurors to note the ways Abdul-Muhaimin allegedly tried to distance himself from the crime and avoid being held accountable for the “callous and brutal taking of another human being’s life."

Sita said investigators found a list on Abdul-Muhaimin’s phone, created at 5 a.m. on the day of the shooting, that included an electric saw, bleach, trash bags, a tarp and gloves. She said that after the shooting, he contacted friends who helped him clean the scene.

Officers arriving at the Hawksbury Road townhome found what prosecutors described as a chaotic scene. A crime scene investigator testified that every surface of the home was covered in a hazy white film and that the home smelled strongly of bleach. At the bottom of the basement stairs, investigators found Stanley’s body wrapped in blankets, plastic and cords. Firestarter logs had also been placed near the body.

Prosecutors also questioned a representative from M&T Bank, who testified that someone unsuccessfully tried to withdraw money from Stanley’s account at an ATM shortly after 1 a.m. on Dec. 27, 2020. Prosecutors said Abdul-Muhaimin then nearly drained the account, using a banking app to transfer $2,500 to his then-girlfriend, who lived in San Diego.

Abdul-Muhaimin’s defense team painted Stanley as a man living a double life and said their client shot him out of fear.

“He had two sides,” Assistant Public Defender Elizabeth Crow told jurors. “He was a talented educator and he was a predator who pressured former students into sex.”

Crow said the killing was not about money.

“This killing is about a complex relationship between Zayeed and his seventh-grade math teacher,” she said.

Crow told the jury that Abdul-Muhaimin had been a student in Stanley’s seventh-grade math class years earlier at Friendship Academy and was a bright boy who had problems at home.

“So Stanley stepped in and became Zayeed’s mentor,” she said. “He became like a father figure.”

Abdul-Muhaimin claims Stanley sexually abused him in those years, but a judge ruled that evidence inadmissible.

Crow read text messages exchanged between the two men in October, 2020. Abdul-Muhaimin told Stanley via text that “it felt good to be pleasured but I’m not into that.”

“It’s just not me,” Abdul-Muhaimin texted.

Stanley apologized and agreed to stop, texting Abdul-Muhaimin, “I still regret my decisions and my actions,” and adding, “Please delete these messages. LOL. Don’t need no drama.”

Abdul-Muhaimin testified in his first trial that Stanley had asked him to kidnap another man. Crow said that man was also a former student of Stanley’s and was in a sexual relationship with him.

Stanley gave Abdul-Muhaimin a gun and paid him, Crow said, but he did not carry out the plan.

After returning from the aborted kidnapping attempt, Abdul-Muhaimin placed the handgun on a nightstand in Stanley’s bedroom, Crow said.

Stanley was disappointed, she said, that the man had not been kidnapped, especially since he'd already paid Abdul-Muhaimin. Stanley allegedly picked up the handgun while telling Abdul-Muhaimin he had always wanted him. Abdul-Muhaimin alleges Stanley then demanded sex from Abdul-Muhaimin — sex he had planned to get from the other man.

“Zayeed was scared and he reacted. He made a quick move, rolled across the bed, and got a shotgun from the closet,” she said.

Afterwards, Crow said, Abdul-Muhaimin acted in an extreme state of panic.

Noting that Stanley weighed 370 pounds, Crow said that if this were a case involving a young woman confronted by a large man holding a loaded gun and demanding sex, “no one would question that she feared for her life.”

The trial is set to resume Thursday for a second day of testimony.