4 Teenagers Are Charged In Shooting at Wheaton Mall

The teenagers weren't thinking about last-minute holiday purchases when they pulled into the Montgomery County shopping mall two days before Christmas. Instead, one of the teens later told police, the group went to the crowded mall to randomly shoot someone.

All four, including a 14-year-old girl, are members of the Bloods street gang in Prince George's County, authorities said. Two of them opened fire in the parking lot of Westfield Wheaton Shopping Centre when they spotted members of a rival gang, police said.

In announcing the arrests yesterday, county police said the four were being held on charges of attempted first-degree murder. Police identified the suspects as Antwaun T. Lee, 18, of Greenbelt, Andrew Davies, 19, of Hyattsville, Anthony D. Taylor, 19, of the District and Aliah Kinard, 14, of Alexandria. Kinard is charged as an adult. Samantha L. Quick, 20, of Greenbelt is charged as an accessory after the fact.

Charging documents allege that the shooting started with two words from Taylor, whom police identified as the leader of the Lanham gang.

"Bust them!" Taylor, known as "Kchaos," is alleged to have said upon seeing the rivals, members of the MS-13 gang.

On his command, police said, Lee and Davies opened fire. Police said the bullets struck one of the MS-13 members, a 20-year-old Silver Spring man, in the shoulder and shattered the windows of a car occupied by two bystanders.

The suspects led police officers on a chase through a Macy's department store before escaping through an emergency exit in a dressing room area. Davies fired one round -- an apparent accidental discharge -- in the process, according to the charging documents. Officers found two guns in the dressing area, one of which had been stolen.

According to police, Quick, who is known as "Cherry," picked the four up and drove them to the Delaware portion of the Eastern Shore.

In the parking lot, police found a 1996 Honda Accord that had been stolen from the New Carrollton Metro station the day before. In the car, investigators found stolen property from burglaries in Howard and Prince George's counties. On the rearview mirror, they found a fingerprint linked to a man who gave police the name Walter J. Graves when he was arrested in October.

Detectives pulled his arrest photo from that incident and matched it to one of the men caught on surveillance footage from the mall.

Meanwhile, on the Eastern Shore, Lee, Kinard and Quick emerged as suspects in a series of burglaries, according to charging documents. On Jan. 2, they were arrested after a high-speed pursuit with Maryland and Delaware state police.

Lee was fingerprinted, and police in Montgomery soon learned that the man they knew as Graves was Lee, police said.

Montgomery detectives headed to Delaware. Kinard and Quick confessed to the incident at the mall and a series of burglaries in Howard and Prince George's and on the Eastern Shore, according to the documents. They and Lee, Kinard's boyfriend, were being held yesterday in Delaware.

Police arrested Davies, whose fingerprints were also in the stolen Accord, and Taylor on Tuesday in Prince George's, police said. Efforts to reach attorneys for or family members of the five suspects were unsuccessful.

Staff writer Dan Morse contributed to this report.