Three young people are charged with first-degree murder and armed robbery following the July 17 killing of Bijan Nassirdaftari, 17, of Rockville in an apparent drug purchase gone awry.
Nassirdaftari was a 2005 Gonzaga High School graduate, and lived on Plantation Lane, near I-270 between Montrose Road and Tuckerman Lane.
ACCORDING TO police and District Court charging documents, Nassirdaftari and three friends met the three suspects — Michael Manaugh, 18, of Silver Spring, Ricardo Thomas, 20, of Washington, D.C., and Ardele Monkkonen, 18, of Washington, D.C. — on the 10400 block of Rockville Pike with the intention of buying one pound of marijuana from Manaugh.
Nassirdaftari had been in contact with Manaugh for approximately two weeks about the purchase, and one of his friends said he believed Manaugh was the same person he had dealt with in a deal a year earlier. At one point, Nassirdaftari told friends that he didn’t need to be accompanied because he trusted the suspects, according to the documents.
It was a set-up.
“Michael Manaugh had no intention of providing the drugs,” said Lucille Baur, a spokesperson for Montgomery County Police. “He had established a plan with [Thomas] and [Monkkonen]that when he arrived they would rob him of the money.”
For reasons that are not known, the group moved from Rockville Pike to the corner of Alta Vista Road and Alta Vista Terrace — in a residential area near Old Georgetown Road — to make the transaction. Nassirdaftari rode with the suspects and his friends followed in a separate car.
NASSIRDAFTARI borrowed $700 from one of his friends and at one point walked back to his friends’ car to borrow an additional $200, according to the documents, then got in the suspects’ car. They tried to rob him of the money and a struggle ensued. Nassirdaftari escaped the vehicle, and began to run down the street, but was shot in the back of the head by Thomas, who took the money from his person, according police statements and the charging documents.
All three suspects were captured the day after the murder and are being held without bond at the Montgomery County Detention Center. State’s Attorney Doug Gansler is expected to prosecute the cases himself, with hearings starting as early as next month.
The murder comes only a month after an 18-year-old Damascus High School graduate, Ezekiel Oak Babendreier, was stabbed and killed in Germantown under similar circumstances.
“Is this a trend? Well not unless you consider two to be a trend. But it is a tragic coincidence that we have had two young people lose their lives in similar circumstances,” Baur said. “The suspects in both these cases did not intend to provide marijuana. In both cases these victims fought back and lost their lives in the process.”
The cases are not related.
Baur said that the killings point to the real dangers of teenage drug use.
“Suburban teenagers and their parents could be under the belief that it’s not that bad a thing to smoke marijuana on occasion,” she said. “Now we have two young people who lost their lives trying to purchase marijuana. … Not only is it against the law but it can have life-ending consequences.”
“Our hope as a police department would be that these two incidents serve as wake-up calls for anyone that believes marijuana use is not that big a deal,” she said.