Tacoma man charged with murder in November shooting at Stadium District gas station
A 27-year-old man was charged Tuesday with murder for shooting at a car parked at a gas station in Tacoma’s Stadium District last year, killing a passenger and seriously injuring its driver.
Marcus Riley Langford, who has been in custody at the Kent Regional Justice Center since February, court records say, was charged in Pierce County Superior Court with two counts of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, first-degree assault and first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm.
Pleas of not guilty were entered on his behalf at arraignment Tuesday afternoon. Commissioner Barbara McInvaille set bail at $2 million in the murder case. Langford also was arraigned on stolen property and theft charges in two separate cases from Lakewood and Gig Harbor. Pleas of not guilty were entered for Langford in those cases, and bail was set at $10,000 and $2,500, respectively.
Deputy prosecuting attorney Lisa Wagner argued for the high bail in the murder case, telling the court that Langford is a suspect in another homicide from April 2022, which was investigated by the Sheriff’s Department. Wagner said she is reviewing that investigation and expects to file a separate murder charge against Langford.
Wagner also made note of Langford’s criminal history, which includes a manslaughter conviction for which he was eventually sentenced to seven years, six months in prison for his role in a 2012 killing in Tacoma. Police said he had six outstanding warrants for his arrest in Pierce County when he was transported here from Kent. Wagner described Langford as a danger to the community, telling McInvaille that a federal database linked him to three other shootings, including the county homicide. Wagner said Langford has a gun whenever he has access to one.
“I don’t know that I can emphasize enough how dangerous I think that Mr. Langford is,” the deputy prosecutor said.
Charging documents in the Tacoma homicide accuse Langford of using a 9 mm pistol on Nov. 19, 2022 to shoot at a Dodge Challenger parked at a Shell gas station in the 800 block of Division Avenue across the street from Wright Park. Tacoma Police Department spokesperson Shelbie Boyd said Tuesday the gunfire struck and killed 33-year-old Marquis McGown.
The 32-year-old driver was badly wounded, but police said he drove McGown to a local hospital, where he died of multiple gunshot wounds. According to the declaration for determination of probable cause, doctors said he was shot 11 times in the chest, shoulder and scalp.
A motive in the killing is unclear. The driver who was with McGown allegedly refused to describe the shooter and wouldn’t tell police whether he was in or outside the Dodge when the shooting began, telling officers to look at surveillance video. The man reportedly said he’d gone to the gas station to buy cigarettes.
McGown is a Tacoma man from Hilltop who was incarcerated on a murder conviction from 2006 to 2022, when his time was reduced by two years, nine months, according to court records. At age 17, he was sentenced to 20 years in state prison for shooting a 19-year-old man who was also from the Hilltop area.
McGown was re-sentenced in October based on State v. Houston-Sconiers and other Supreme Court decisions that gave Superior Court judges wide discretion when sentencing juvenile offenders convicted as adults of criminal offenses. Defense attorneys wrote in court filings that McGown was 16 at the time of the offense, was immature and had been traumatized by abuse at home. Attorney Mary High wrote that while he was incarcerated, McGown obtained his GED and certificates for job training and personal improvement.
Surveillance video and a federal database that compares bullet casings recovered from crime scenes helped identify Langford as the gunman, according to the probable cause document. In May, the lead detective on the homicide got a lead from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms NIBIN database. Records state it potentially linked the 11 shell casings recovered in the gas station parking lot to three other shooting investigations, including a county homicide.
An FBI agent then contacted the Tacoma detective who said he was assisting the Sheriff’s Department with its homicide investigation. The detective gave the agent surveillance images from the gas station shooting, and the agent reportedly said he believed Langford was the shooter.
Investigators found Langford’s Facebook profile, which was under a different name, and in a photo posted two days before the homicide, he was wearing rings that appeared consistent with the jewelry the gunman was wearing. Records state Langford also had contact with the Fife and Lakewood police departments in the days after the shooting, and body-worn cameras on officers showed he was wearing rings and clothing like those seen on surveillance footage from the gas station.
This story was originally published August 8, 2023 at 1:30 PM.
