A Gaithersburg man was sentenced to six years in prison Wednesday for lying about his role in the murder of Meiko Locksley, 25, the son of the University of Maryland football coach Mike Locksley, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.
Chief U.S. District Judge James Bredar sentenced John Willie Kennedy, 46, “for obstruction of justice, specifically for lying to a federal grand jury and to law enforcement in connection with a murder” said the statement released Wednesday.
Kennedy’s attorney, Brandon Patterson, did not immediately respond to a phone call requesting comment Thursday.
The statement did not say whether anyone else has been charged in the murder.
On Sept. 3, 2017, Meiko Locksley was found suffering from a gunshot wound in front of a townhouse in Columbia in Howard County. He was transported to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, the statement said.
At the time of the murder, his father was coaching the University of Alabama football team.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Kennedy, who lived in the townhouse row behind the houses where Locksley was found, called 911 on Sept. 3 to report the shooting. When police interviewed Kennedy in the days following the shooting, he claimed he didn’t see anything and that he was at home when he heard a loud “bang” and went outside to investigate, according to the statement.
Kennedy also claimed he had not seen Locksley that day, but phone records indicated a series of calls occurred between the two men before the murder, the statement said.
On Jan. 4, 2018, investigators interviewed Kennedy again, asking about the calls he had with Locksley, and Kennedy said that he “might have” sold marijuana to Locksley but remained steadfast that he had no information about the fatal shooting and only heard the gunshots, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In March 2020, federal investigators obtained a search warrant for Kennedy’s phone. The location data on the device showed that at the time of the murder, he was in the parking lot in front of the house where Locksley was shot, the statement said.
On April 4, 2021, Kennedy told a federal grand jury that he was inside his house when Locksley was killed, but investigators later heard from witnesses that saw him in front of the townhouse where the murder took place “immediately before and after the shooting,” according to the statement. He was also seen putting something into his truck immediately after the shooting, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
Kennedy later admitted that he lied to the grand jury, and “that by doing so he obstructed the proceeding and impeded the investigation,” the statement said.