Baltimore County man convicted in Baltimore City murder spree, three dead

A Baltimore City jury convicted Baltimore County man Bryan Cherry, 38, of first-degree murder and possession of a deadly weapon in a three-killing spree that ran from East Eager Street to Middle River and back to Abbott Court. The verdict capped a case that left three people dead, one man seriously wounded, and two jurisdictions tracing the same suspect across separate crime scenes.

The violence began June 26, 2024, in the 2600 block of East Eager Street at the EBMC Care Center. Witnesses said Cherry stabbed a man eight times while the victim was giving free supplies to patients. The man survived and later told police he had never seen Cherry before, a detail that underscored how quickly the attack unfolded and how little warning the victim had.

Eleven days later, prosecutors said Cherry struck again in Middle River. On July 7, 2024, police found 29-year-old Autumn Harvey and her 75-year-old grandmother, Iona Elizabeth Sellers, dead in the unit block of Taos Circle. Investigators said Harvey had been stabbed multiple times and Sellers suffered blunt-force trauma to the head. Sellers’ wallet and credit card were later used in Baltimore City at Dollar General and Walgreens, tying the Middle River killings back to the city and showing how the case moved through everyday commercial spaces as well as neighborhoods.

Evidence also linked Cherry to the Middle River scene through surveillance and DNA. Detectives said a cigarette recovered near the double homicide matched Cherry. A week after the killings, police in Baltimore City responded to Abbott Court and found Sierra Johnson dead on a living-room sofa from blunt-force trauma to the face and head. A witness identified Cherry as the suspect in that killing, extending the spree into another city neighborhood and deepening the overlap between Baltimore City and Baltimore County investigators.

Cherry was arrested in August 2024. Baltimore County prosecutors later said he pleaded guilty to the murders of Harvey and Sellers, while Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates said his office would seek life without the possibility of parole because the repeated violence was so brutal. The city’s case now ends with a conviction, but the facts of the spree still point to the same hard question for both jurisdictions: where the system had a chance to stop him before three people were killed.

The verdict lands in a year when Baltimore City ended 2024 with 201 homicides, down from 261 in 2023, and Baltimore County had reported 11 homicides by July 1, 2024, a drop of more than 31% year-over-year. Those numbers show progress, but Cherry’s case shows how quickly a single offender can cut across county lines and overwhelm the ordinary seams between investigations.