On March 14, 2025, Brian Joseph Sykes (of Millington, MD) was indicted by a grand jury for the October 11, 2024, homicide of David Howard Teat. On April 7, 2026, Mr. Sykes entered a guilty plea to Second Degree Murder and Motor Vehicle Theft. On April 23, 2026, he was sentenced to 40 years for the murder charge and a consecutive 5 years for the auto theft, with 10 years suspended. Mr. Sykes will serve the 35 years sentence in the Maryland Division of Corrections. Upon his release from incarceration, Mr. Sykes will be on five years of supervised probation.
The underlying facts of this conviction began on October 11, 2024, when Sooklal “Ron” Alston called 911 after he located David Howard Teat laying in a puddle of blood inside the home at 103 Pfalzgroff Road in Millington, MD. Deputies from the Queen Anne’s County Sheriff’s Department responded to the address, entered the home, and found Mr. Teat deceased with a large knife impaled through his neck.
Mr. Alston told police that he and Mr. Teat, who were friends, had been texting back and forth that day about Mr. Teat meeting up with Mr. Sykes, who is Mr. Teat’s stepson and tenant at the 103 Pfalzgroff address. Mr. Alston was worried about Mr. Teat because Mr. Teat was attempting to evict Sykes from the property due to failure to pay the rent and drug use. Mr. Alston told police that Mr. Sykes was angry at Mr. Teat because his mother, Mr. Teat’s wife, had passed away recently in a nursing home and there had been a delay in communicating that information to Sykes. Additionally, Mr. Sykes blamed Mr. Teat for calling Animal Control to seize his pet cats.
The Queen Anne’s County Office of the Sheriff Criminal Investigation Unit responded to the scene and conducted the investigation. Police learned that Mr. Teat’s vehicle, with an attached trailer, was missing and the vehicle belonging to Mr. Sykes was left behind in the driveway. A lookout was placed for Mr. Teat’s vehicle and trailer within the law enforcement nationwide database. Police also executed a search warrant at the residence, and several items of evidentiary value were seized and submitted for analysis. Some of these items included: blue jeans that appeared to have blood stains on the legs and a bowl in the kitchen that had a visible fingerprint on it, that appeared to be in blood.
Mr. Teat’s body was transported to the Medical Examiner’s Office in Baltimore, MD for an autopsy. His death was ruled to be a homicide as the result of 29 sharp force injuries to the: neck (3), anterior torso (11), posterior torso (3), and upper extremities (12). The wounds to the neck injured Mr. Teat’s jugular veins and the stab wounds to the torso injured his diaphragm, liver, mesentery, and right lung. The autopsy further revealed that the wounds Mr. Teat sustained were consistent with defense-type wounds as he tried to protect himself from the attack.
Two days after Mr. Teat was found murdered, Detectives from the Sheriff’s Office traveled to Dover, DE and located Mr. Teat’s trailer and cellphone at an address where Mr. Sykes’s girlfriend had been staying. The owner of this address, as well as the girlfriend, were subsequently interviewed; both stated that they had last seen Mr. Sykes in the morning of October 11, 2024. While the Detectives were interviewing these individuals, Detectives Rickard and Sullivan were contacted by the Philadelphia, PA Police Department, who informed the Detectives that two of their Patrol Officers had located Sykes in Mr. Teat’s truck and Sykes was now in police custody.
Police subsequently obtained Mr. Sykes’s DNA and submitted all of the evidence to the Maryland State Police Crime Lab for fingerprint and DNA analysis. Results confirmed that the suspected bloody fingerprint on the bowl belonged to Mr. Sykes. DNA profiles found on the handle of the knife located in Mr. Teat’s neck belonged to Mr. Teat and Mr. Sykes, the DNA profile of the blood on the blue jeans belonged to Mr. Teat, and the DNA profile on the interior waistband of those same jeans belonged to Mr. Sykes.
Police conducted additional interviews while the case awaited trial and one of those interviews was again with Mr. Sykes’s girlfriend. She told Detectives that she had received a telephone call from Mr. Sykes after he was apprehended in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and during the phone call, Mr. Sykes told her that he had killed Mr. Teat in anger over his mother and loss of his cats.
This case was prosecuted by State’s Attorney Lance G. Richardson and Deputy State’s Attorney Christine Dulla Rickard, with help from Assistant State’s Attorney Caitlin Robinson. The Prosecutors commend the initial responding deputies and detectives from the Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigation Unit for their hard work on this case, as well as all of the witnesses for their cooperation in the investigation.