Kendall Cook didn’t feel safe and had been closing his GQ Barbershop in Carlisle early each night in the spring of 2021.
His best friend also took a train to stay with him on May 21, 2021.
The next day, someone called the barbershop, prepared to pay double the cost for haircuts for three men from Cook. So instead of closing early, he stayed open and waited as the customers kept pushing back their arrival time.
While waiting, Cook cut his friend’s hair and they chatted about grilling food and whether the San Francisco 49ers could win the Super Bowl.
That’s when a masked gunman wearing camouflage and a hat barged into the shop and opened fire at Cook.
“Mike!” Cook shouted, acting as if he recognized the gunman. The gunman killed Cook, 39, and injured another barber, Anthony White.
The best friend, Tarrin Britton, and White both testified Thursday in Cumberland County Court in a preliminary hearing against Michael A. Baltimore, Jr., 45. They identified him as the masked gunman.
The hearing at the Cumberland County Prison lasted four hours. At the end, District Judge Jonathan Birbeck determined the identifications were enough to pass charges of criminal homicide, attempted criminal homicide, aggravated assault and recklessly endangering another person up to the Cumberland County Court of Common Pleas.
Baltimore’s attorney, Mike Palermo, argued that the identification of Baltimore relied upon two “eye” witness testimonies, based only on the eyes of the gunman visible under his hat and above his mask.
But Britton and White confidently identified him by his eyes and overall appearance and by the fact Cook called out, “Mike!” as the man entered the building.
Prosecutors showed footage from a body camera worn by Nathan McDowell, a Carlisle Borough Police Officer, which documented police response to the scene.
Officers arrived at GQ Barbershop at 128 N. Hanover St. around 7:30 p.m. that night, minutes after Baltimore had been shot, according to the footage.
They found an exasperated Britton shouting “Please, please, help him!” as they cleared the scene and located Cook’s body inside the barbershop as well as White in the alleyway behind the shop.
The barbershop had a surveillance system in place, according to Zachary Saum, a Carlisle Borough Police officer. But police had previously seized the recorder because of another crime that happened in the barbershop, so there was no audio or video to play as evidence. Instead, prosecutors relied on testimony from Britton and White, whose demeanor on the stand could was vastly different.
Britton was mournful and explained Cook’s father had passed away the weekend prior to the shooting. Cook had also been receiving death threats and told Britton he “didn’t feel safe.” So Britton took the train from Harrisburg to Lancaster, where Cook lived, on Friday, May 21, to be with his friend.
The two woke up early the next day, Britton said, and decided to go to the barbershop to earn some money to pay off an automotive repair bill for Cook’s wife car. They arrived around 3 p.m., hoping to earn enough cash to pay off the debt.
Britton said Cook normally closed the barbershop at around 7 p.m. every night. But in the months prior to the shooting, Cook closed it earlier and earlier in the afternoon.
White later explained the barbers at the barbershop could come and go and were free to cut as much hair as they liked throughout the week so long as they paid a weekly rent on the chair.
When the shooting happened, Britton said he bailed out of the chair to hide behind a pillar in the shop. He dropped his phone, so after the shooter left, he ran out into the street and yelled for someone to call 911.
Britton found Cook’s body lying face-down on the floor. When a nurse arrived, she flipped Cook’s body over.
White took the stand next. He sauntered down the hall, chatting with corrections officers before he sat down and delivered colorfully vulgar testimony to the court, occasionally sparring with Palermo and calling him names.
“I’m Mike Palermo, I’m Mister Baltimore’s lawyer,” Palermo introduced himself.
“(Expletive) job, (expletive) job,” White said, criticizing his job as being really bad.
White testified he spent most of the day in the barbershop before Cook and Britton arrived. When Cook mentioned the bill he was trying to pay, White stopped taking walk-in appointments, and instead hung out around the shop.
White said he received a call from a man who said he and two others wanted to pay $50 each for a haircut from Cook. The typical haircut at the barbershop cost $20 to $25, so Cook said he would stay extra to collect.
The three men continued calling and texting back, pushing the haircut back further and further before Britton asked for a haircut at around 7:15 p.m.
“(Expletive) weirdo, he had all day and waited until these guys were about to come in for a haircut?” White said, explaining he never liked Britton but that Cook was loyal to his longtime friend.
Cook was a few minutes into Britton’s haircut when he called out, “Mike!” That struck White as odd. While Baltimore used to work at the barbershop, nobody had seen him in months.
That’s when the gunshots rang out. White said he ran down the back hall toward the exit before he was shot in the back. After he was shot, he dropped to the ground, and the man he identified as Baltimore ran past him to escape.
“I opened the door and it felt like I got hit by a sledgehammer,” White said. “It was like a thousand pounds on my chest—I didn’t know I got shot—I thought I tripped.”
A neighbor standing above White kept telling him to “think about your daughter.”
While Britton and White said they could tell the masked man was Baltimore because of his eyes, White explained he knew it was Baltimore because of his stance, his frame and the way he walked.
Prosecutors also brought Monique Johnson, Baltimore’s former romantic partner from North Carolina, to the hearing. She said in spring of 2021, her friend told her his friend, Baltimore, needed a place to stay.
Baltimore stayed with Johnson for a month before he asked her to drive him from North Carolina back up to Pennsylvania, she said. Baltimore was wearing army fatigues and had a pistol on him, Johnson testified.
Johnson did not know the exact date of the journey, but said it was around the beginning of summer while her children were still in school.
“Is there any doubt in your mind the shooter was Michael Baltimore?” Nicole Vito, a prosecutor with the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office, asked White.
“Nah, nah,” White said, looking contemptuously at Baltimore from across the courtroom.
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