Prince George’s County man convicted in fatal shooting of former partner

Harry Lindsey’s conviction turned a Prince George’s County domestic-violence case into a stark question about the system’s warning signs. Jurors found the 33-year-old Landover man guilty Friday of first-degree murder and related charges in the July 5, 2025, shooting death of Sharita Cristwell, 29, inside an apartment on the 700 block of Stretford Way in Landover.

The case traces a short but deadly timeline. On June 16, 2025, Lindsey was accused of assaulting and choking Cristwell at their home in Bladensburg. After that arrest, a judge ordered him to home detention with a GPS ankle monitor and a stay-away order. He was released days later, and less than three weeks after the arrest, Cristwell was dead.

Lindsey and Cristwell had been in an on-and-off relationship for 11 years. They shared two young daughters, and Lindsey was their father. Prosecutors said the violence escalated after police records classified the June case as high danger, a designation tied to the choking allegation. County Executive Aisha Braveboy said strangulation is one of the clearest lethality warning signs in domestic violence, and pointed to Lindsey’s prior weapons convictions as part of the broader risk picture.

Police said Lindsey cut off his ankle monitor after the shooting. He was arrested the next day in Capitol Heights after spending hours elsewhere, including a trip by Uber toward a local jail and a stop at a friend’s home, according to court accounts. His capture ended a chaotic flight, but it did not answer the larger question raised by the case: whether stronger intervention during the June arrest could have changed the outcome.

At trial, Lindsey admitted he killed Cristwell in a fit of rage on July 5, 2025, but he claimed she brought the gun. Prosecutors still had to prove the killing was planned, and the jury reached its verdict after a four-day trial.

The case has become a measure of Prince George’s County’s domestic-violence response. Braveboy said she could not explain why Lindsey was released on home monitoring, but said he should not have been. She also linked the case to the county’s long push to treat strangulation as a felony in Maryland, a policy shift officials have described as critical because strangulation is often a predictor of homicide.

Cristwell’s family has been left to raise two children without their mother while the criminal case moves to sentencing, now scheduled for July 24. Prince George’s County also had a $500,000 domestic-violence grant program in fiscal 2025 for housing, counseling, legal services and advocacy, a reminder that the county has invested in prevention even as this case exposed how quickly a monitored defendant still can move from accusation to homicide.