Man gets 30 years for killing brother as daughter waited at birthday party

Kevin Tuck’s daughter was turning 10 on April 13, 2025, and waiting for her father to arrive at her birthday party at a local skating rink. She sat with her mother and siblings in the food court, watching the entrance.

Her father never arrived.

Before he could join them, Kevin Tuck and his younger brother, Jason, argued at their mother’s home in the 4000 block of Winlee Road in Randallstown. Jason shot Kevin with a shotgun, killing him in their mother’s kitchen.

“We waited for a father who always showed up for his children,” Kevin’s fiancée, Camisha Coke, said at Jason Tuck’s sentencing hearing Tuesday. “We waited for my partner and best friend. But Kevin never walked through those doors.”

Baltimore County Circuit Judge Marc A. DeSimone Jr. sentenced Jason Tuck, 40, of Owings Mills, to 30 years in prison.

A jury convicted Tuck in June of second-degree murder, first-degree assault and using a firearm in a crime of violence. It acquitted him of first-degree murder.

Tuck maintained Tuesday that he never intended to kill his 39-year-old brother and had wanted only to scare him.

“I’ve always loved my brother. I would give anything to go back to that day and change what happened,” he said. “I never would have hurt my brother like that. I never wanted this to happen.”

DeSimone acknowledged the overlapping grief of a family mourning Kevin while facing Jason’s imprisonment.

“I can’t ignore the fact that in this case, those who love the victim and those who love the defendant are one and the same,” he said.

The judge described police body-camera footage in which the men’s mother said she had lost two sons in a single moment as one of the most profound moments he had witnessed during his years on the bench.

Their mother, Darlene Tuck, said she had Kevin and Jason later in life and tried to raise them with “old-school” values of responsibility, manners and respect. They grew up close, she said.

“When you saw one, you saw the other,” she said. “They were each other’s keepers.”

When disagreements arose, she said, she had always been able to defuse them.

“I was there when this situation got out of control,” she said. “So it was a surprise to me that I couldn’t stop it. I’d always been able to.”

Jason worked as a tractor-trailer driver, she said. Kevin, who was supposed to start a new job the day after he was killed, was her protector and caretaker — “more like the head of the family” than just a son.

With one younger son dead and the other incarcerated, she said, she is left caring for an older son who is a disabled veteran.

Coke told the court this was not the first time Jason had pointed a gun at Kevin. She described Kevin as someone who encouraged his younger brother to make better choices.

“I believe that Kevin’s determination to build a good life, despite the challenges he faced, became something Jason resented rather than something he could learn from,” she said.

Jason told the judge he had made a stupid decision and only wanted love and respect from his brother.

“I’m so sorry to everybody and I’m overcome with pain and grief,” he said.

Living with what he had done, he said, was a never-ending punishment.

Assistant State’s Attorney Alex Walsh sought a 40-year prison sentence. The state’s sentencing guidelines called for a combined four to 35 years.

“I would argue that this is one of the most depraved-heart acts I have ever seen in my career as a prosecutor. In front of his mother, he murdered his own brother,” Walsh said.

Walsh also read from a book of fiction Tuck had self-published, citing a passage in which the narrator wonders how he became “a monster.”

“I look in the mirror now, and I crack a huge smile trying to hold back my laugh, while deep inside I feel corrupted,” the passage read.

Tuck's book, "Baltimore Streetlights: Everything Is Fair under the Baltimore Streetlights ," was published exactly four years before the shooting.

Defense attorney Warren Brown sought a 10-year sentence, urging DeSimone to consider Tuck’s children and his 73-year-old mother, who might not live to see his release under a longer term.

“If you give him 60 years, it’s not going to bring Kevin back,” Brown said. “I’m trying to stem the pain and the suffering.”

Brown argued that a lengthy sentence would leave Tuck’s children growing up visiting their father in prison.

DeSimone imposed 40 years, with all but 25 years suspended, for second-degree murder and a consecutive 20 years, with all but five years suspended, for the firearm offense. The combined sentence is 60 years, with all but 30 years suspended. DeSimone also ordered five years of supervised probation following Tuck’s release.

The first-degree assault conviction merged for sentencing.

Coke described Kevin as a devoted father whose greatest joy was raising his children. His death, she said, robbed him of the chance to see them flourish.

“Kevin’s life had value,” she said. “His voice had value. His presence had value. He was wanted. He was loved and needed, and no disagreement, resentment, or anger could ever justify the taking of his life.”