Ja’Quan Dontremique Green was convicted of murdering 23-year-old Britrain Gray as Gray worked an overnight shift at a Maryland restaurant.
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A Maryland man was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years for fatally shooting a 23-year-old McDonald’s employee through a drive-thru window as the victim worked an overnight shift in 2022, prosecutors announced.
Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Elizabeth Morris sentenced Ja’Quan Dontremique Green, 25, of Middle River, on Wednesday for the killing of Britrain Marcelus Gray at a McDonald’s in Gambrills. An Anne Arundel County jury convicted Green on Jan. 21 of first-degree murder and use of a firearm in a crime of violence. The sentence allows the possibility of eventual parole.
The shooting happened shortly before 5 a.m. on May 13, 2022, at the McDonald’s on Route 3 South. Prosecutors said Gray, an Odenton resident, was working inside the restaurant’s drive-thru cash booth and assembling Happy Meal boxes when Green approached the window and opened fire. First responders found Gray wounded inside the restaurant, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Surveillance video became a key part of the investigation. Prosecutors said footage showed a black sedan with no visible license plate and darkened windows circling the restaurant. The vehicle stopped, and the shooter walked to the drive-thru window before firing three rounds from a 9 mm handgun at close range. The shooter then returned to the vehicle and left the area.
Green was arrested July 7, 2022, on unrelated charges, and authorities recovered a handgun from his black 2001 Cadillac Catera. Firearms examiners later determined that the gun matched three 9 mm cartridge casings recovered outside the McDonald’s drive-thru window, according to prosecutors. Investigators also said a decal on Green’s Cadillac corresponded with one visible on the vehicle recorded by surveillance cameras.
Investigators gathered additional evidence from Green’s social media accounts and a search of his bedroom. Prosecutors said images showed Green wearing clothing similar to items worn by the shooter captured on surveillance footage, including a jacket and boots with fur lining. Authorities said similar clothing was later recovered during a search.
Prosecutors have offered no definitive explanation for why Gray was targeted. At sentencing, Assistant State’s Attorney Glen Neubauer said evidence suggested Gray may have appeared in a social media video made by a relative that mocked someone Green knew or the neighborhood where that person lived. Authorities have not established that theory as a definitive motive for the killing.
Green continued to maintain his innocence at sentencing. “Respectfully, I cannot take responsibility for something I did not do,” Green said, according to Law&Crime’s account of the hearing. His attorney asked the court to leave open the possibility that Green could eventually be released on parole.
Morris declined to impose a sentence that would permanently eliminate the possibility of parole. Law&Crime reported that the judge described life without parole as “essentially a death sentence” and referred to Green’s youth at the time of the killing. Green was about 21 when Gray was killed.
Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney Anne Colt Leitess said the sentence brought accountability in a killing that took Gray’s life while he was simply doing his job. She said she hoped the outcome would provide some peace to Gray’s family after they endured the criminal case and evidence surrounding his death.
The sentence follows more than four years of investigation and court proceedings since Gray was killed. Green now faces life in a Maryland correctional facility plus an additional 20 years for the firearm conviction, with the possibility of parole left open under the sentence imposed by the court.
Author note: Last updated September 25, 2026.