Article provided by Howard County State’s Attorney’s Office
A 21-year-old Silver Spring man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 2017 brutal assault on another man at a Jessup gas station. Malcolm Xavier Littlejohn, of the 11000 block of Old Columbia Pike, was sentenced by Howard County Circuit Court Judge Richard S. Bernhardt yesterday. On June 27, 2018, Littlejohn pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and conspiracy to commit first-degree assault on Paul Albritton. Littlejohn is one of three men convicted in the attack.
According to police and prosecutors, at 6:45 a.m. on October 4, 2017, Paul Albritton of Sykesville parked his vehicle at a BP gas station and entered the station’s convenience store located in the 8800 block of Washington Blvd. His passenger, Eric Ricardo Exum, initially waited in the truck while Albritton went inside. When Albritton returned to his vehicle, a man later identified as Malcolm Xavier Littlejohn approached Albritton and struck him in the back of the head with a 3½-foot length of wooden two-by-four before fleeing. Albritton was transported to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center.
Police and prosecutors methodically connected three men to the assault conspiracy using surveillance video, telephone calls and text messages, cell phone geo-tracking and financial transactions at a nearby credit union suggesting payment. In a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors wrote that Littlejohn “was the literal hit man for this offense.”
Assistant State’s Attorney Scott Hammond stated that the near-fatal blow to the back of the victim’s head “forever changed the course of Mr. Albritton’s life.” Referring to a craniectomy performed by Shock Trauma surgeons, Hammond stated, “If not for that, he’d be dead today.” Albritton suffers from traumatic brain injury, walks with a cane and suffers from continuous pain and discomfort. Hammond quoted Albritton’s written victim impact statement in which he wrote, “Our lives have been turned upside down [by] this heinous act.” Littlejohn read prepared remarks to the court, apologizing to Albritton and stating that he took responsibility for his “mistake.”
Judge Bernhardt observed, “All of this is so senseless,” and noted the “heinous nature of the crime and conduct.” He sentenced Littlejohn to 25 years in prison on the assault charge, with a consecutive, fully-suspended sentence of 25 years on the conspiracy to commit first-degree-assault charge. The judge also placed Littlejohn on five years of supervised probation upon his eventual release.
Last month, a jury convicted Eric Ricardo Exum, 49 of the 600 block of Edgewood St., NE, Washington, D.C. on one count of first-degree assault and one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree assault. He will be sentenced on September 27. A third man— Antwan Zahir Mayhew, 38 of the 3700 block of Donnell Dr., District Heights, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit first-degree assault on July 2 and received a fully-suspended, 10- year sentence.
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