Two Silver Spring teens are facing charges in connection with a June 23 shooting that injured one person at a Taco Bell Cantina on Colesville Road in downtown Silver Spring, according to authorities.
Souleymane Traore, 18, was charged with attempted first-degree murder and first-degree assault and Maximus Jean Jerome, 19, was charged with “multiple counts of second-degree assault,” police said Monday in a statement. The pair was arrested July 1.
Traore is being represented by the public defender’s office. No court records for Jerome could be found online.
According to police, officers responded to a report of a shooting shortly after 6 p.m. at the restaurant at 8662 Colesville Road. Responding officers found a bullet casing in the restaurant, according to June 23 radio transmissions.
According to the statement, detectives have determined that Traore and Jerome allegedly confronted three “male victims,” leading to a fight in the restaurant. After the pair left the restaurant, “Traore went back inside and held the victims at gunpoint,” the statement said.
The brother of one of the victims then arrived and “attempted to intervene,” according to the statement. “Traore put the handgun to the head of the victim’s brother and fired one round, causing a graze wound to his head.”
Traore and Jerome then left the scene, police said.
According to the June 23 radio transmissions, a man who had been shot in the back of the head arrived at the emergency room at Holy Cross Hospital at 1500 Forest Glen Road in Silver Spring. The man said he had been shot at the Colesville Road restaurant, the transmissions said.
Police identified Traore and Jerome as the two suspects in the shooting on June 27 and obtained an arrest warrant, police said in Monday’s statement.
After the pair were arrested July 1, police said in the statement that they found “items of evidentiary value” during a search of Traore’s residence.
Traore and Jerome are being held without bond in the Montgomery County Central Processing Unit in Boyds.