Police say a late-night encounter in a Northwest Baltimore parking lot turned deadly when 49-year-old Rene Parks allegedly shot her estranged husband once in the neck as he sat behind the wheel of a parked car.
Officers were called on the night of March 31 to a report of gunfire and found 43-year-old Garreth Parks Jr. gravely wounded in a vehicle in northwest Baltimore. Medics rushed him to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. Detectives took Rene Parks into custody the next day, April 1, and she is now charged in connection with the killing. Investigators say the case remains an active homicide probe.
What police say
Responding officers were sent to the 3700 block of West Belvedere Avenue after reports of shots being fired. In the back of a parking lot, they found a silver vehicle and a passenger pressing a cloth to the driver’s neck in a desperate attempt to slow the bleeding.
Charging documents allege that Parks Jr. and his girlfriend had pulled into the lot when another car rolled up, and a woman fired a single round through the driver’s-side window. Police later identified the suspected shooter as Rene Parks and arrested her at her Baltimore County home on homicide and weapons charges, according to the Baltimore Police Department.
Charging documents and witness accounts
Prosecutors say the victim’s girlfriend gave investigators a close-range account of the shooting. According to charging documents, she told detectives that Parks walked up, pulled out a purple handgun and fired through the open driver’s-side window, hitting Parks Jr. in the neck. The girlfriend then tried to help him as he bled in the front seat…