A Montgomery County jury convicted two men of first-degree murder for a killing on the Schuylkill River Trail

Cicely McCarty walked out of a Norristown courtroom late Thursday and said the jurors had done their job: They convicted Cody Reed and Marquis Johnson of first-degree murder for killing her son, Daquan Tucker, in March 2023.

“We’re just happy that they did my brother justice,” said McCarty’s daughter, Kenyada Tucker, her voice thick with emotion.

It had taken jurors almost five hours of deliberation to convict Reed and Johnson, both 24, of murder, as well as conspiracy, robbery and related crimes for luring Tucker to an isolated section of the Schuylkill River Trail in West Norriton Township and shooting him dead.

Thursday’s verdict came at the end of the second trial for Reed and Johnson, after a jury deadlocked in the case in February. After their conviction, the two men left the courtroom, saying they disagreed with the verdict and planned to appeal.

Their attorneys declined to comment.

Assistant District Attorney Kathleen McLaughlin said the evidence, from the outset, showed that the two men intended to kill Tucker.

“This wasn’t an accident,” McLaughlin said. “This wasn’t something that just happened.”

Tucker, 25, was found at the bottom of an embankment near the trail by a cyclist on March 3, 2023, according to trial testimony. He had been shot three times, once in his head, and twice in his neck, likely after falling down the slope.

The first shot was fired so close to Tucker’s head, McLaughlin said, that the muzzle of the gun had left a burn mark on his skin.

Only a close friend, someone Tucker trusted, could have gotten that near, she said. And he had been seen with the two defendants not far from where his body was found, she added, asking jurors to rely on their common sense in deciding the case.

Johnson’s attorney, John McCaul, told jurors there were no eyewitnesses to the slaying, and the murder weapon has never been found. He said investigators conceded that there was no DNA or other direct evidence to prove that Johnson and Reed were on the trail that night.

“Using your common sense is not code for making this massive leap of faith,” McCaul said. “That’s what you’d have to do to reach the conclusion they want.”

McLaughlin said the jurors would have to ignore a significant amount of evidence to acquit the two men, including surveillance footage that syncs up with cellphone records tracking their movements before and after Tucker’s murder.

“This is not conjecture. This is not speculation,” she said. “We know the three of them were together.”

The day before Tucker’s body was found, Reed had FaceTimed him, inviting him to his apartment in Norristown, prosecutors said. To facilitate the trip, Reed ordered an Uber for Tucker using his girlfriend’s account.

Once together, Reed, Tucker, and Johnson were seen on surveillance footage walking through Norristown in the direction of the Schuylkill River Trail. The trio was last spotted on Chain Street, a few hundred yards from an access point to the trail.

Reed and Johnson left their phones behind, something McLaughlin said was unusual for them, and a clear indication they didn’t want to be tracked.

Meanwhile, Tucker’s girlfriend — upset with him after an argument earlier that night and suspicious that he might have been unfaithful — had been following him through a “Find My iPhone” app, prosecutors said. She called Tucker just before 9 p.m., and he reassured her everything was fine: He said he was with Reed, on the trail.

A half-hour later, Reed and Johnson were spotted elsewhere in Norristown, without Tucker. But Tucker’s phone traveled with them before being shut off near Reed’s apartment, according to records presented by Montgomery County Detective Heather Long.

Minutes later, Johnson’s girlfriend picked up Reed and Johnson and drove them to Philadelphia. Reed was seen leaving his apartment with a large bag, which McLaughlin said was filled with clothing.

And Reed never returned to that apartment, the prosecutor said. Instead, he and Johnson spent the next 35 days traveling through the Poconos and parts of North Jersey, staying in Airbnbs. Their time on the run ended when U.S. Marshals tracked them to one of those rentals in Atlantic City.

Reed’s attorney, Brendan Campbell, said Reed fled Norristown because “the streets talk,” and Reed knew Tucker’s disappearance would be linked to him and Johnson, who had been with him on the night he was killed.

Campbell presented another theory of the crime. He suggested that Tucker had been killed by a drug dealer he knew who lives along the path Reed and Johnson took away from the trail. Tucker’s phone directly passed by the dealer’s apartment that night, according to evidence presented at trial.

“There are so many different possibilities of what could’ve happened that night,” he said. “The commonwealth wants to spoon-feed you their version, and that’s their job. Your job it to look critically and logically at the evidence.”

Reed and Johnson will be sentenced to life in prison in the coming weeks.