The long-running Middle River nightclub murder case has ended in a guilty verdict: a Baltimore County jury on Thursday convicted Joshua Edwards of first-degree premeditated murder in the 2019 stabbing death of David Bryan Collins Jr. The deadly confrontation unfolded outside the Excape Nightclub in Middle River, and prosecutors say they will ask the judge to hand down a life sentence.
Prosecutors said the violence erupted on Dec. 21, 2019, after an argument outside the club. Officers later found Collins suffering from 42 stab wounds, and he died at a hospital, according to WBALTV. A witness testified that Edwards lured Collins to the side of the building and warned, “I’m going to air you out,” before the attack, prosecutors told the court. Surveillance video from the nightclub helped investigators identify Edwards as the suspect, the state’s attorney said.
Charging documents filed in 2019 describe a brawl that started when the door Collins was using to leave the club struck Edwards. During the struggle, Edwards’s own knife severed one of his fingers, and police recovered that finger along with a folding knife at the scene, according to WMAR-2 News. Edwards was arrested shortly afterward, when Harford County deputies responded to a separate injury call and identified him as the suspect. Collins, 32, served with the Maryland National Guard; his family memorialized him in 2019 and set up a GoFundMe, CBS Baltimore reported.
What prosecutors said
In court, prosecutors argued that witness testimony and the club’s surveillance footage lined up on the details of the confrontation and supported a finding of premeditation, according to WBALTV. After hearing that evidence, the jury returned a guilty verdict on the first-degree murder charge on Thursday…