Killer, Accomplice Get Lengthy Prison Sentences for Silver Spring Slaying
Two Montgomery County men were sentenced to lengthy prison terms Tuesday for the killing of a Bowie man in connection with a marijuana deal.
“This case was really about retaliation. It was about the law of the street,” State’s Attorney John McCarthy said at a news conference after the sentencing.
Sulaiman Jalloh, 24, from the 10700 block of Begonia Lane in Bowie, was killed outside the Days Inn at 8040 13th St., Silver Spring, on May 28, 2017, Montgomery County police said.
Two men were sentenced. James Polk Jackson, 24, received 30 years in prison, and Ruben Ortiz, 22, received 30 years with all but 24 suspended, McCarthy said.
Jackson inflicted the stab wounds that killed Jalloh, McCarthy said. Ortiz struck Jalloh during the attack, as did four or five other men and one woman, McCarthy said.
The proceeding lasted more than a week, and Circuit Court Judge John M. Maloney presided over the trial.
McCarthy in recent months has told reporters that the public might see marijuana as a nonviolent enterprise.
“The distribution of marijuana serves as the baseline or the predicate to what ultimately becomes a homicide,” McCarthy said.
Although the case ended at the parking lot of the Days Inn, he said, it began some hours earlier when friends of Jalloh and others took marijuana from sellers who were by the Metro station.
James Polk Jackson and Ruben Ortiz | Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office
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