Taeyon Prather left his home in suburban Maryland, police say, expecting to make an unusual trade: His designer parka, plus cash, for a Glock handgun.
Nine minutes later, he lay dying in a nearby parking lot. The parka, money and weapon were gone. And police in Montgomery County this week arrested a 20-year-old and 16-year-old they say carried out a murder and robbery. The older suspect was on probation for assault at the time, while the younger one was a high school student with an extensive police record dating back to when he was 12, according to court filings.
Both were ordered held without bond Tuesday.
Court records say the 16-year-old suspect was shot in his lower abdomen during the altercation and, after arriving at a hospital, claimed that a stranger shot him while he was walking to a nearby library to study. Investigators say they disproved that explanation, in part, by reviewing nearby surveillance video.
Court records do not specify the value of the coat, the gun or how much cash was supposed to bridge the difference. But the Moose Knuckles branded jackets like the one Prather, 18, brought to the parking lot can retail for more than $1,000. Certain brands of down parkas are becoming targets for robbers, police departments have said recently.
In court Tuesday, an attorney who represented both suspects asked Montgomery District Judge Michael Glynn to release them on house arrest pending further court proceedings. The attorney noted that a tipster who allegedly linked the 16-year-old to the shooting also said he’d been shot by Prather.
“That anonymous tipster said that the decedent had a firearm and used that firearm against my client,” assistant public defender Luke Swinney said, suggesting the 16-year-old may have reacted to what he believed was a threat to his life.
The teen is a student at Gaithersburg High School, according to Swinney and a spokesman for Montgomery County Public Schools.
Both suspects have been charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery. The teen has been charged in adult court. The Washington Post generally doesn’t name juveniles charged with crimes. The second suspect is identified in court records as Kevin Perez-Fierro of Montgomery Village. Family members who came to his court hearing Tuesday declined to comment afterward. The victim’s family could not be reached for comment.
For police, the case began at 7:21 p.m. on Jan. 2, when they were called for a person laying in a parking lot outside a community pool along Rolling Fork Way in an area east of Clarksburg. They found Prather with a gunshot wound to his head and he was pronounced dead at the scene. His coat, backpack and iPhone were missing.
Investigators spoke to his mother, who lived nearby and said that he’d left the home saying he was off to sell his coat, according to court records. Surveillance video from her home showed Prather leaving at 4:56 p.m., holding a puffy black jacket and wearing a black Nike backpack. Detectives also studied video from the parking lot, according to court filings, which indicated at least two people arrived before Prather — one in a gray minivan and the other in a white SUV. Audio from the surveillance system recorded multiple gunshots at 5:05 p.m., the filings state. The video showed the two vehicles then leaving the parking lot.
Detectives studied Prather’s cellphone records, learning that at 4:30 p.m., he received a phone call from a number linked to Perez-Fierro. The suspect’s phone records showed that before the shooting, his phone moved from an area near his home in Montgomery Village to the area of the crime scene, stopped at 4:51 p.m. and began moving several minutes later.
Investigators also studied Instagram messages between Perez-Fierro and Prather “regarding a proposed trade involving a ‘Moose Knuckles’ jacket and cash in exchange for a Glock firearm.” One of the messages, sent by Perez-Fierro, contained a photo showing a hand holding a black Glock 17 semiautomatic, according to police filings.
Detectives learned that patrol officers had earlier stopped Perez-Fierro driving a Honda Odyssey similar to the van seen in the parking lot surveillance video.
Three days after the shooting, police received an anonymous tip from someone wanting to provide information “about the recent homicide of an 18-year-old that was found dead,” police wrote in court papers. The tipster offered a nickname for one of the suspects and said he’d shot the victim after they’d fought over a coat. Detectives tied the nickname to the 16-year-old, in part, through his Instagram username.
Court records show investigators reviewed the 16-year-old’s police records and arrest records, which involved at least seven incidents. The court records do not detail how those cases were resolved. A review of adult court records indicates that the matters were handled in juvenile court, where proceedings are kept confidential.
In court Tuesday, assistant state’s attorney Lauren Turner said he is associated with a gang and was found to be involved in three juvenile court matters in 2024, including a robbery and car theft.
The 16-year-old is due to return to court next week. While Swinney did not discuss the future of the case Tuesday, it is typical for defense attorneys to try to get such matters transferred to juvenile court.
Swinney said that Perez-Fierro has completed about one year of an electrician apprenticeship program. He is due in court again on Feb. 6, according to court records.
Montgomery County’s top prosecutor, John McCarthy, declined to comment specifically on the Prather case. But he said that in general, many police officers he speaks with have grown frustrated with the number of juveniles arrested for crimes who are immediately back on the streets. “They feel these kids are not deterred,” McCarthy said. “They tell me kids are not being deterred, and they’re sometimes taunting them.”
Especially for relatively minor matters, such as theft, disorderly conduct or trespassing, McCarthy said, police have concluded that juveniles will not receive any consequences from the juvenile system, so the officers are less inclined to go through the process of arresting them. “That is happening,” McCarthy said. “So the kids get a pass.”
McCarthy said the Maryland General Assembly is currently considering reducing the types of crimes in which juveniles are automatically charged as adults, meaning that more juveniles who commit certain violent crimes could stay in the juvenile system. McCarthy said that he and other prosecutors worry the teens would be going into a system in which there is already a waiting list of several months to enter programs, and once they enter them, they can be out of them in just a few months. “The system is not adequately dealing with the kids they have now,” he said.
He cited a program in the adult prison system — at the Patuxent Institute in Jessup, Maryland — that is designed to provide young adults, many of them charged with violent crimes, with intensive rehabilitation, therapy and psychological services. “These juveniles deserve a facility like that. Juveniles deserve and require the same level of services,” McCarthy said.
He said that building out such services for violent, juvenile offenders should precede sending additional violent offenders into a “a system already overwhelmed by demands for treatment. Ultimately, failure to have adequate programs in place threatens public safety.”
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