July 24, 2026
Teenager Accused Of Heinous Double Murder Of 15 And 9-Year-Old
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RSS Feed A Baltimore mom came home from a 12 hour work shift to find her 15-year-old daughter shot and killed in her own bed, and her 9-year-old son shot and killed in the hallway. It took a few weeks, but police now say they have their killer in custody: a 16-year-old boy who had apparently only recently begun to talk with her daughter. We go over the mountain of evidence that led police to the teen and a warning from the police chief for every parent.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey, folks, it is Friday, July twenty fourth. A shocker coming to us out of Baltimore, the fact that a sixteen year old kid is being charged with first degree murder and is accused of killing two people. The more shocking part is who he's accused of killing. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. I'm talking about a double murder and the parties involved are sixteen, fifteen, and nine.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: It's incredibly shocking. In fact, you said when you first saw this headline out of Baltimore, Maryland, that you thought, oh wow, here we go again, another accidental shooting with a gun. No, police have charged sixteen year old Keith James Junior with premeditated or first degree murder two counts of them, Yes, for a fifteen year old Giovanna Myrie and her nine year old brother, Steve Alan. This is a difficult story to understand. It's shocking, but look, it's another It's another example of unfortunately, we don't want to believe younger kids or younger I mean teens, are capable of this type of a violent, premeditated act. And yet here we are once again.
00:01:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you were saying that Robes. I'm trying to make sense of it. It sounded like from what we were have been seeing and hearing and reading from the authorities there, they're trying to make sense of it. But rome I did. We've covered several stories recently of accidental shootings and kids getting the hands on guns. So when I saw this man kids playing around again, the gun was left out Robes. They do believe that this sixteen year old did exactly what he planned to do. A sixteen year old planned to carry out the murder of a fifteen year old and a nine year old and a nine year old, what the actual hell.
00:02:00
Speaker 2: And according to all parties involved, it was aimed at someone he had just recently started talking to.
00:02:10
Speaker 3: This was chilling to me.
00:02:11
Speaker 2: The Baltimore County Police Chief said this, and this is something and this is why I think every parent needs to hear this story.
00:02:18
Speaker 3: This is what he said. We need to.
00:02:21
Speaker 2: Make sure we know who our kids are associating with. We've heard that time and time again, but this is a glaring example. And to know that the mom, the mom of this fifteen year old and nine year old, was at work all day, working her ass off, checking in with her kids, She had checked in with her daughter, Giovanna at four pm. When she got home at seven pm, she walked into her home and found her nine year old son shot and killed in a hallway, and found her daughter shot multiple times in her own bed. The horror of that is unimaginable, Robes.
00:03:01
Speaker 1: The murder that you just describe. As we are recording this, it's on the twenty fourth of July. The murders happened on the seventh, Have that right, So we're talking weeks ago. Two weeks ago. They didn't know immediately who their suspect was and it has taken them time. The rest just happy he was just in court yesterday. But Robes they that part also got me that it looked like he he was trying to get away with it.
00:03:30
Speaker 2: Uh, yes, he was, absolutely And look, when you start to try to understand how this all developed, we can rely on what the police have told us so far. According to the police report, these two had just met Giovanna who was fifteen, and Keith James Junior, and they were talking online. They had video chats and he apparently and by the way, he had just turned sixteen. So look, this is a young teenage boy. But he finally meets up with her on July fourth. By all accounts, it appears that was the first time they met in person, and Giovanna was facetiming with a friend in her bed. He was in the bed with her, and the friend told police in the aftermath of all of this that she saw him holding a handgun in bed with her, and she overheard him say to her he'd have to kill her if Giovanna quote messed around with any other guys. And look, obviously that's something someone's going to remember, especially when you now hear your friend has been shot and killed. So that was the first way that police were able to start tracking down this kid, who he was and what possibly could have happened that led to this. Now, they also got her cell phone, Giovanna's cell phone, and this is some scary stuff corroborated the friend's account. Giovanna sent a text message to her friend saying, quote, Keith said, if I cheat, He's gonna put the gun inside me.
00:05:05
Speaker 3: Help me. That was her text to her friend.
00:05:11
Speaker 1: Oh, fifteen years old. Well, what happens she gets introduced, This guy is introduced into her life, and she's immediately scared. Help that sounded like me, I mean, this girl is dead now. I mean.
00:05:24
Speaker 3: I wish she could have texted that to her mom.
00:05:27
Speaker 2: You know, I mom even know, yes, And I'm imagining this mom. And look, I don't know if she's a single mom, but it kind of was depicted that way. She's out working, goes to work at seven am, gets home at seven pm. This is a hard working mom of two, single mom of two who's busting her butt twelve hours a day at a job. She's doing her best to make sure her kids are safe and healthy and fed and taken care of. She's checking in with them, she's texting them. This is what moms do when they're at work and their kids are at home. You've got a fifteen year old at home with a nine year old. You're thinking, they're OK, I've absolutely done that. That's about the age spread between my two girls. And you check in with them. You're not thinking a boy is coming over there, getting in her bed, has a gun, some guy she's just met you know nothing about. It's just it's so sad because she's doing her thing. You know, it's just it's hard to keep track and to know exactly who your kids are talking.
00:06:21
Speaker 1: To tell it was as your understanding that the mom was aware that she knew this kid. Okay, wasn't mine.
00:06:26
Speaker 3: Okay, now it is not my understanding. She did not know.
00:06:28
Speaker 2: This is not something I don't believe Giovanna was sharing this with her mother. It was her friends knew this is This is a classic example of what you could imagine could be going on behind the scenes. It's just who she chose to befriend, who she chose to let into her bedroom.
00:06:44
Speaker 1: Didn't feel comfortable if she was that scared to tell a friend to write that down, to put that in a text. She was scared enough that her mom should have gotten involved. Why didn't she go to her mom? Who knows? Maybe it's just the boy thing. Not supposed to have a boy in the house anyway, she's going to get in trouble.
00:06:58
Speaker 2: Of course, that was probably at it. Yes, I think any mom, any teenage girl, Yes that's a worry, that's a concern, But it's not something she's going to offer up to her mom. Hey, I just met this guy, this sixteen year old dude. Cool if he comes over while you're not here, the answer would be absolutely hell no, So of course this mom didn't know what was going on. And the fact it's just so strange to me that they just recently met and he could be that invested in her, that possessive of her in just a short period of time. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
00:07:30
Speaker 1: I don't see anything set him off. He was already in that space. She didn't introduce something his life that made him snap or real crazy that was there, that was in him. He had a gun. He got so upset that he killed.
00:07:43
Speaker 3: This girl and her nine year old brother.
00:07:47
Speaker 1: That was the point of that.
00:07:48
Speaker 2: So police right now believe, yes, they believe that what happened. He went over there to kill her for whatever reason, and the nine year old, unfortunately, was a witness to the murder, and so that's why he shot him. And the fact that he was in the hall, you know, he could have been coming up to investigate. He hears a shot and then on the way out, they believe Keith James Junior then shot this sweet, poor little nine year old kid whose mind had nothing to do with anything, just was unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time. And by the way, this sixteen year old, as we mentioned at the top, charged with two counts of first degree murder. He was transferred to a juvenile facility, which I was a little bit confused by. But that's just in the meantime while they're putting this case together, and he'll have another hearing shortly, but he is officially being charged as an adult. I don't think there's any question when you have something like this, where it's premeditated, and look, there is a mountain of evidence already against this young man. When we come back, we will tell you from surveillance footage to text messages, to cell phone records, to the mass transit he used to get from his home to her home. We'll tell you what police have as they mount their case against this sixteen year old alleged double murderer. Welcome back, everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ. We are talking about Honestly, it's a difficult story to go through, but an important one for parents, working parents, working moms. You have to pay attention to who your kids are online with, who they're chatting with, who their friends are. This is just yeah, so when you just met look, something as simple as even having a nanny cam in your home.
00:09:37
Speaker 3: I'm telling you, when my kids were teenagers.
00:09:40
Speaker 2: I put a camera coming and going from the entrance of the apartment so that I knew it alerted me on my cell phone no matter where I was in the world, who was coming.
00:09:50
Speaker 3: Into my apartment.
00:09:53
Speaker 2: They hated that. They hated it, but I could hear and I could see, and it was a motion sensor, and just having that pretty inexpensive camera made me feel a little safer about who was.
00:10:05
Speaker 3: In my apartment with my children when I wasn't there.
00:10:08
Speaker 1: It's always the kid. We go through this.
00:10:10
Speaker 2: Now.
00:10:11
Speaker 1: We have one back from college right now, and the beans at the house sometimes by herself, and we anytime, and I'm usually in the background when you're on the phone. So and so came over. Now I'm in the back. Who's there, right, any dudes? Any guys? I mean, we're where we are now. And I was even objecting to the idea of who's in the house. What guy he's gay, don't care, can't stay in the bedroom like we're still I'm serious. We asked them in a little but really, you naturally just asked those questions. We're not getting onto this mom or anything saying she didn't do that thing, but what it just points out something really really important role just an awareness.
00:10:50
Speaker 3: I don't that phone.
00:10:51
Speaker 1: That's an almost impossible thing to figure out and know what your kids are doing.
00:10:56
Speaker 2: But man, there is other technology that can help parents at least monitor their kids. I just I feel for this poor woman who was doing her best and was checking in on her kids and had no idea that she had just met this guy. It's just a reminder, even if you have a good kid and a kid you trust, kids are kids, and they do stupid things, and young girls get excited at attention they may be getting from this older guy. It's just unfortunate that it ended the way it did. But the evidence against this young man is significant. They have a combination of MTA bus and area surveillance footage. They show him getting off at a stop about a half a mile from her home, and then they have surveillance footage showing him leaving her home along a different bus route, and the time he was leaving her home. Guess what, this time he had a mask on and a hood on, But he was wearing the same headphones, the same shorts, and had the same book bag as before, so they know he went there without a mask, without a hood and he came out disguised or trying to look to mask his appearance basically, And look, this is significant because his cell phone and the MTA surveillance put him at the scene of the crime. Add to that the witness, the friend, and the text messages where he's threatening to kill her. Yeah, that's all pretty damning evidence.
00:12:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, but uh, look, at this point we always say this is an innocent young man until otherwise proven, And at this point at least, we don't know exactly what his defense strategy possibly could be. But so far that the strategy is hell, yeah, to defend him to the fullest extent they can.
00:12:40
Speaker 2: Yes, we actually have an official statement from his attorney who said, and to your point, he said, and you say this almost every time we have an episode when somebody is charged with a heinous crime, including David, which it's pretty hard to even say this when you hear the evidence that prosecutors are presenting. But James's attorney said this, I would like to ask everyone to reserve judge, afford my client his constitutional right to the presumption of innocence, and reserve judgment until the actual evidence is presented in a court room that is always an important reminder, but right now it's hard to be focused on him and his constitutional rights when you have this mom now just wanting answers and certainly wanting justice for her two children who she lost in one fateful moment. I mean, within when she talked to her daughter last at four PM until the time she got home at seven. In those three hours, something was incurring at her house that she couldn't have even imagined was going on.
00:13:38
Speaker 1: Crime. We cover a lot of really horrible crimes, it's just the part of this one just was your heart's with her. A woman coming home at the end of the night to find that is horrific.
00:13:53
Speaker 2: It is horrific, and again just a warning to parents out there that this stuff, as rare as it is, does happen. And I think that's just the important lesson that we can do more, perhaps to try and just make sure we keep our kids safe.
00:14:08
Speaker 3: We'll stay on top of the story as always, but we appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Robot alongside TJ. Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Hey, folks, it is Friday, July twenty fourth. A shocker coming to us out of Baltimore, the fact that a sixteen year old kid is being charged with first degree murder and is accused of killing two people. The more shocking part is who he's accused of killing. And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ. I'm talking about a double murder and the parties involved are sixteen, fifteen, and nine.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: It's incredibly shocking. In fact, you said when you first saw this headline out of Baltimore, Maryland, that you thought, oh wow, here we go again, another accidental shooting with a gun. No, police have charged sixteen year old Keith James Junior with premeditated or first degree murder two counts of them, Yes, for a fifteen year old Giovanna Myrie and her nine year old brother, Steve Alan. This is a difficult story to understand. It's shocking, but look, it's another It's another example of unfortunately, we don't want to believe younger kids or younger I mean teens, are capable of this type of a violent, premeditated act. And yet here we are once again.
00:01:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you were saying that Robes. I'm trying to make sense of it. It sounded like from what we were have been seeing and hearing and reading from the authorities there, they're trying to make sense of it. But rome I did. We've covered several stories recently of accidental shootings and kids getting the hands on guns. So when I saw this man kids playing around again, the gun was left out Robes. They do believe that this sixteen year old did exactly what he planned to do. A sixteen year old planned to carry out the murder of a fifteen year old and a nine year old and a nine year old, what the actual hell.
00:02:00
Speaker 2: And according to all parties involved, it was aimed at someone he had just recently started talking to.
00:02:10
Speaker 3: This was chilling to me.
00:02:11
Speaker 2: The Baltimore County Police Chief said this, and this is something and this is why I think every parent needs to hear this story.
00:02:18
Speaker 3: This is what he said. We need to.
00:02:21
Speaker 2: Make sure we know who our kids are associating with. We've heard that time and time again, but this is a glaring example. And to know that the mom, the mom of this fifteen year old and nine year old, was at work all day, working her ass off, checking in with her kids, She had checked in with her daughter, Giovanna at four pm. When she got home at seven pm, she walked into her home and found her nine year old son shot and killed in a hallway, and found her daughter shot multiple times in her own bed. The horror of that is unimaginable, Robes.
00:03:01
Speaker 1: The murder that you just describe. As we are recording this, it's on the twenty fourth of July. The murders happened on the seventh, Have that right, So we're talking weeks ago. Two weeks ago. They didn't know immediately who their suspect was and it has taken them time. The rest just happy he was just in court yesterday. But Robes they that part also got me that it looked like he he was trying to get away with it.
00:03:30
Speaker 2: Uh, yes, he was, absolutely And look, when you start to try to understand how this all developed, we can rely on what the police have told us so far. According to the police report, these two had just met Giovanna who was fifteen, and Keith James Junior, and they were talking online. They had video chats and he apparently and by the way, he had just turned sixteen. So look, this is a young teenage boy. But he finally meets up with her on July fourth. By all accounts, it appears that was the first time they met in person, and Giovanna was facetiming with a friend in her bed. He was in the bed with her, and the friend told police in the aftermath of all of this that she saw him holding a handgun in bed with her, and she overheard him say to her he'd have to kill her if Giovanna quote messed around with any other guys. And look, obviously that's something someone's going to remember, especially when you now hear your friend has been shot and killed. So that was the first way that police were able to start tracking down this kid, who he was and what possibly could have happened that led to this. Now, they also got her cell phone, Giovanna's cell phone, and this is some scary stuff corroborated the friend's account. Giovanna sent a text message to her friend saying, quote, Keith said, if I cheat, He's gonna put the gun inside me.
00:05:05
Speaker 3: Help me. That was her text to her friend.
00:05:11
Speaker 1: Oh, fifteen years old. Well, what happens she gets introduced, This guy is introduced into her life, and she's immediately scared. Help that sounded like me, I mean, this girl is dead now. I mean.
00:05:24
Speaker 3: I wish she could have texted that to her mom.
00:05:27
Speaker 2: You know, I mom even know, yes, And I'm imagining this mom. And look, I don't know if she's a single mom, but it kind of was depicted that way. She's out working, goes to work at seven am, gets home at seven pm. This is a hard working mom of two, single mom of two who's busting her butt twelve hours a day at a job. She's doing her best to make sure her kids are safe and healthy and fed and taken care of. She's checking in with them, she's texting them. This is what moms do when they're at work and their kids are at home. You've got a fifteen year old at home with a nine year old. You're thinking, they're OK, I've absolutely done that. That's about the age spread between my two girls. And you check in with them. You're not thinking a boy is coming over there, getting in her bed, has a gun, some guy she's just met you know nothing about. It's just it's so sad because she's doing her thing. You know, it's just it's hard to keep track and to know exactly who your kids are talking.
00:06:21
Speaker 1: To tell it was as your understanding that the mom was aware that she knew this kid. Okay, wasn't mine.
00:06:26
Speaker 3: Okay, now it is not my understanding. She did not know.
00:06:28
Speaker 2: This is not something I don't believe Giovanna was sharing this with her mother. It was her friends knew this is This is a classic example of what you could imagine could be going on behind the scenes. It's just who she chose to befriend, who she chose to let into her bedroom.
00:06:44
Speaker 1: Didn't feel comfortable if she was that scared to tell a friend to write that down, to put that in a text. She was scared enough that her mom should have gotten involved. Why didn't she go to her mom? Who knows? Maybe it's just the boy thing. Not supposed to have a boy in the house anyway, she's going to get in trouble.
00:06:58
Speaker 2: Of course, that was probably at it. Yes, I think any mom, any teenage girl, Yes that's a worry, that's a concern, But it's not something she's going to offer up to her mom. Hey, I just met this guy, this sixteen year old dude. Cool if he comes over while you're not here, the answer would be absolutely hell no, So of course this mom didn't know what was going on. And the fact it's just so strange to me that they just recently met and he could be that invested in her, that possessive of her in just a short period of time. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
00:07:30
Speaker 1: I don't see anything set him off. He was already in that space. She didn't introduce something his life that made him snap or real crazy that was there, that was in him. He had a gun. He got so upset that he killed.
00:07:43
Speaker 3: This girl and her nine year old brother.
00:07:47
Speaker 1: That was the point of that.
00:07:48
Speaker 2: So police right now believe, yes, they believe that what happened. He went over there to kill her for whatever reason, and the nine year old, unfortunately, was a witness to the murder, and so that's why he shot him. And the fact that he was in the hall, you know, he could have been coming up to investigate. He hears a shot and then on the way out, they believe Keith James Junior then shot this sweet, poor little nine year old kid whose mind had nothing to do with anything, just was unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time. And by the way, this sixteen year old, as we mentioned at the top, charged with two counts of first degree murder. He was transferred to a juvenile facility, which I was a little bit confused by. But that's just in the meantime while they're putting this case together, and he'll have another hearing shortly, but he is officially being charged as an adult. I don't think there's any question when you have something like this, where it's premeditated, and look, there is a mountain of evidence already against this young man. When we come back, we will tell you from surveillance footage to text messages, to cell phone records, to the mass transit he used to get from his home to her home. We'll tell you what police have as they mount their case against this sixteen year old alleged double murderer. Welcome back, everyone to this episode of Amy and TJ. We are talking about Honestly, it's a difficult story to go through, but an important one for parents, working parents, working moms. You have to pay attention to who your kids are online with, who they're chatting with, who their friends are. This is just yeah, so when you just met look, something as simple as even having a nanny cam in your home.
00:09:37
Speaker 3: I'm telling you, when my kids were teenagers.
00:09:40
Speaker 2: I put a camera coming and going from the entrance of the apartment so that I knew it alerted me on my cell phone no matter where I was in the world, who was coming.
00:09:50
Speaker 3: Into my apartment.
00:09:53
Speaker 2: They hated that. They hated it, but I could hear and I could see, and it was a motion sensor, and just having that pretty inexpensive camera made me feel a little safer about who was.
00:10:05
Speaker 3: In my apartment with my children when I wasn't there.
00:10:08
Speaker 1: It's always the kid. We go through this.
00:10:10
Speaker 2: Now.
00:10:11
Speaker 1: We have one back from college right now, and the beans at the house sometimes by herself, and we anytime, and I'm usually in the background when you're on the phone. So and so came over. Now I'm in the back. Who's there, right, any dudes? Any guys? I mean, we're where we are now. And I was even objecting to the idea of who's in the house. What guy he's gay, don't care, can't stay in the bedroom like we're still I'm serious. We asked them in a little but really, you naturally just asked those questions. We're not getting onto this mom or anything saying she didn't do that thing, but what it just points out something really really important role just an awareness.
00:10:50
Speaker 3: I don't that phone.
00:10:51
Speaker 1: That's an almost impossible thing to figure out and know what your kids are doing.
00:10:56
Speaker 2: But man, there is other technology that can help parents at least monitor their kids. I just I feel for this poor woman who was doing her best and was checking in on her kids and had no idea that she had just met this guy. It's just a reminder, even if you have a good kid and a kid you trust, kids are kids, and they do stupid things, and young girls get excited at attention they may be getting from this older guy. It's just unfortunate that it ended the way it did. But the evidence against this young man is significant. They have a combination of MTA bus and area surveillance footage. They show him getting off at a stop about a half a mile from her home, and then they have surveillance footage showing him leaving her home along a different bus route, and the time he was leaving her home. Guess what, this time he had a mask on and a hood on, But he was wearing the same headphones, the same shorts, and had the same book bag as before, so they know he went there without a mask, without a hood and he came out disguised or trying to look to mask his appearance basically, And look, this is significant because his cell phone and the MTA surveillance put him at the scene of the crime. Add to that the witness, the friend, and the text messages where he's threatening to kill her. Yeah, that's all pretty damning evidence.
00:12:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, but uh, look, at this point we always say this is an innocent young man until otherwise proven, And at this point at least, we don't know exactly what his defense strategy possibly could be. But so far that the strategy is hell, yeah, to defend him to the fullest extent they can.
00:12:40
Speaker 2: Yes, we actually have an official statement from his attorney who said, and to your point, he said, and you say this almost every time we have an episode when somebody is charged with a heinous crime, including David, which it's pretty hard to even say this when you hear the evidence that prosecutors are presenting. But James's attorney said this, I would like to ask everyone to reserve judge, afford my client his constitutional right to the presumption of innocence, and reserve judgment until the actual evidence is presented in a court room that is always an important reminder, but right now it's hard to be focused on him and his constitutional rights when you have this mom now just wanting answers and certainly wanting justice for her two children who she lost in one fateful moment. I mean, within when she talked to her daughter last at four PM until the time she got home at seven. In those three hours, something was incurring at her house that she couldn't have even imagined was going on.
00:13:38
Speaker 1: Crime. We cover a lot of really horrible crimes, it's just the part of this one just was your heart's with her. A woman coming home at the end of the night to find that is horrific.
00:13:53
Speaker 2: It is horrific, and again just a warning to parents out there that this stuff, as rare as it is, does happen. And I think that's just the important lesson that we can do more, perhaps to try and just make sure we keep our kids safe.
00:14:08
Speaker 3: We'll stay on top of the story as always, but we appreciate you listening to us. I'm Amy Robot alongside TJ. Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.