A Montgomery County Circuit Court judge sentenced a Gaithersburg teenager to life in prison Friday after he was convicted in the fatal shooting of another teen at the Wheaton Metro station in May 2023, according to the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Emmanuel Simmonds, 17, pleaded guilty in December to first-degree murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, for shooting and killing Tenneson Vaughn Leslie Jr., 18, of Greenbelt.
Paul Zmuda, Simmond’s attorney, did not immediately respond to MoCo360’s request for comment Monday afternoon.
Simmonds is expected to serve 35 years in prison and five years of supervised probation upon release, according to a release from the state’s attorney’s office. Circuit Court Judge Marybeth Ayres recommended that Simmonds be admitted to a youthful offenders program at the Patuxent Institution, a maximum-security correctional facility in Jessup, while he is incarcerated, the release said.
On May 18, 2023, shortly before 6 p.m., two groups of young males who did not know each other got into a physical altercation on an escalator at the Wheaton Metro station at 11171 Georgia Ave., according to charging documents and the state’s attorney’s office.
The altercation escalated to the point in which Simmonds pulled out a gun and shot Leslie in the back of the head, charging documents indicated.
During a preliminary hearing in May, prosecutors said the incident was recorded on WMATA surveillance cameras, which showed that Leslie was running away when he was shot. A public defender said Simmonds was a 10th grader at Col. Zadok Magruder High School in Rockville at the time of the shooting.
Montgomery County police and fire and rescue service crews, along with Metro Transit police officers, responded to the scene and located Leslie, who was unresponsive, on the station platform near the bottom of the escalator, charging documents said. He was transported to MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., where he was pronounced dead later that night, according to charging documents.
“This was a shockingly brazen, callous act by a young offender,” State’s Attorney John McCarthy said in a release. “The defendant executed a young man on a crowded Metro platform, not only claiming one innocent life but placing many other people at risk as there were other citizens, simply using the Metro system, that easily could have been struck by a bullet.”
According to a plea deal reached in December, Simmonds’ incarceration time cannot exceed 40 years, and prosecutors requested the judge recommend Simmonds be admitted to the Patuxent Youthful Offenders program while incarcerated.
The program provides “assessment, stabilization, and transition services to offenders within the department who have serious mental illness,” according to its website.
A co-defendant, who was 14 at the time of the shooting, is facing proceedings in the juvenile court system, the state’s attorney’s office said. MoCo360 generally does not identify juveniles accused of crimes.
Simmonds is being held at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility in Boyds.