Levi Feldman fatally shot his ex-girlfriend Lakisha Wheeler in her car at Pikesville High School in July 2023, a Baltimore County jury found Thursday afternoon.
Jurors found Feldman, 54, guilty of first-degree murder, use of a firearm in a violent crime and illegal possession of a firearm after about an hour of deliberation. The trial began Tuesday in Baltimore County Circuit Court.
Wheeler, a mother of five who worked as a home health aide, was the “glue” of her family, her brother Tavon Wheeler testified.
Jurors didn’t hear about the violent history between the couple, including the final protective order Wheeler had against Feldman, which he violated June 24. In charging documents, police wrote that Feldman had threatened to kill her and her new boyfriend as he tried to come inside.
Early in the morning on July 6, 2023, Wheeler began receiving phone calls from Feldman, the father of her youngest child. The couple had split up recently and Wheeler had moved out of the home where she lived with Feldman a few months before.
Feldman told Wheeler that he had a flat tire and needed the tools in her car, which was registered in his name, to fix it. Dressed in scrubs on her way to work, she met up with Feldman near Sinai Hospital, phone records showed.
Feldman’s attorneys said that’s when Wheeler gave him the tools and the two parted ways, but prosecutors said Feldman got into Wheeler’s Honda Accord, leaving his own phone behind in his car.
A day later, at about 7 p.m. July 7, police found Wheeler shot to death in her car, parked at Pikesville High School. She had been shot five times and suffered blunt force trauma to her face, Assistant State’s Attorney Madison M. Frank said.
“Every pull of the trigger is a choice,” Frank said in her closing argument, arguing that the killing was premeditated.
Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Fuller said Feldman killed Wheeler because he couldn’t have her as a romantic partner.
With no murder weapon, eyewitnesses or physical evidence, the state relied on phone records and surveillance footage that prosecutors said showed Feldman walking away from Pikesville High School after Wheeler was killed.
“Videos don’t lie,” Frank said. “Cell phone records don’t lie. They are what they are and they show what they show.”
But defense attorney Avie Stone questioned why police never tested the DNA they swabbed from the passenger side of Wheeler’s car. Two fingerprints taken from Honda didn’t match Feldman, Stone said.
Stone declined to comment Thursday on the verdict.
Baltimore County Police Detective Doug Jones said that he didn’t send the DNA for testing because the police had a suspect by then. Police arrested Feldman on July 12, 2023.
“They were afraid to lose that suspect,” Stone said. “If they test and it comes back that it’s not him, they got nothing.”
Video surveillance from the high school showed the Honda parking at about 7:45 a.m. and a man getting out of the car around 8:11 a.m., prosecutors said. After Feldman shot Wheeler, they said, he took her phone and walked back to his own car.
Surveillance cameras show a man in a fluorescent green shirt, black pants and a black bookbag walking on Smith Avenue and then Greenspring Avenue that morning.
Wheeler’s brother Tavon and her cousin Jermaine Moore both identified the man in the video, who can be seen holding an object prosecutors said was Wheeler’s phone, as Feldman.
Police never found clothes matching the man in the video, and Stone said the man in the video had different physical features than Feldman did at the time.
Phone records showed that Feldman’s phone was close to Sinai Hospital until about 9:30 a.m., giving him time to walk the roughly 3.5 miles back to his parked car before leaving, prosecutors said.
Stone cast doubt on the phone records, saying the time stamps weren’t reliable or the calls didn’t fit the timeline laid out by the state.
Feldman texted Wheeler later on July 6, at about 4:30 p.m., saying he had a flat, Frank said. Wheeler’s car had been parked in the school’s parking lot since that morning, where it remained untouched until police approached it the next day.
“Why is he sending that text when he knows she’s dead?” Frank asked jurors, suggesting he was covering his tracks.
Feldman’s sentencing is set for Sept. 24.
