Ex-Baltimore Police officer shot by day care owner wife to stand trial on child sex abuse charges this week

BALTIMORE — More than two years ago, James Weems Jr.’s wife shot him in a Washington, D.C., hotel room.

Now, the 59-year-old former Baltimore Police officer charged with sexually abusing children who attended the Owings Mills day care run by his wife, Shanteari Weems, faces his own trial this week in Baltimore County.

The dramatic July 2022 shooting at the D.C. hotel formerly known as the Mandarin Oriental happened shortly after a mother approached Shanteari Weems in the parking lot of Lil Kidz Kastle and told her James Weems had molested the woman’s child in the center’s van.

Shanteari Weems, sentenced last year to four years in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated assault and carrying a pistol without a license, is scheduled to testify for the prosecution, according to court records. She will be detained at Baltimore County Detention Center during the trial before she returns to Federal Medical Center Lexington in Kentucky, where she is serving her sentence.

The two indictments for James Weems — one with additional charges added later — list 33 counts that include second-degree rape, sex abuse of a minor and other offenses related to four children. Weems had worked as a van driver for the center. He retired from the Baltimore Police Department in 2005.

Baltimore County Deputy State’s Attorney Lisa Dever said in a 2023 bail review hearing that prosecutors would proceed only on 10 counts related to one girl so that the other children wouldn’t be forced to testify.

Jury selection in the trial, expected to last five days, is scheduled to begin Monday.

Weems’ attorney Thomas Pavlinic declined to comment last week on the case.

During Shanteari Weems’ February 2023 sentencing in D.C. Superior Court, she said she regretted not letting the justice system handle the abuse allegations. Police found a notebook in the hotel room with handwritten notes reading “I’m going to shoot” him “but not kill him” and “I want these kids to get justice,” according to court records.

“I bear so much guilt that the person I chose to love and trust turned out to be the one the kids needed protection from,” she said during her sentencing. “However, I know that doesn’t justify my actions and I shouldn’t have taken matters into my own hands.”

The day care center’s license was suspended in July 2022, according to a letter from the Maryland State Department of Education’s Office of Child Care to parents.

A database from the state education department’s Division of Early Childhood previously listed reports showing inspectors had found issues like missing information on forms and improper staffing ratios between 2019 and 2022, which were mostly corrected.

That state search tool no longer lists Lil Kidz Kastle. A different day care center, Legacy Child Development Center, now occupies its former Owings Mills location, according to an employee who answered the phone there last week.

Meanwhile, James Weems’ trial has been postponed multiple times over the past two years.

A judge ordered him released on pretrial home detention last October, after his attorneys argued that he wasn’t receiving appropriate medical care in the Towson jail for his shooting injuries. He was shot in the neck and leg, and required the use of a walker at one point.

Defense attorneys and prosecutors have sparred in court filings over evidence, including the contents of a Samsung phone and an iPad.

Weems is charged with displaying obscene material to a minor, according to the indictment, and prosecutors have said the girl Weems is accused of abusing told a relative that he had shown her a pornography site. The state also has said Weems watched pornography in the van while waiting to pick the children up.

In recent filings, attorneys went back and forth over the data extracted from those electronic devices. In the filings, the defense’s forensic expert said the evidence wasn’t sufficient for his analysis because of the records’ format.

Weems’ attorneys, Pavlinic and Thomas T. McDowell, argued that the trial should be postponed again to give them more time to prepare, a motion that a judge denied last week.

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