A Wicomico County Judge has sentenced a Somerset County man for manslaughter in connection to a cold case murder from more than a decade ago.
Ryan Ellis of Princess Anne was sentenced to ten years in prison, the maximum available, with six years active incarceration in the Maryland Division of Corrections (DOC), followed by a period of five years of supervised probation, on a single count of Involuntary Manslaughter.
Evidence revealed that in the early morning hours of January 17, 2010, Ellis, armed with a shotgun, went to the home of Chris Turner in Salisbury, Maryland with the objective of intimidating Turner into repaying a drug debt. Once he arrived at the home, Ellis was startled by movement inside and discharged the gun, killing Preston Morehouse, who was standing just inside the closed front door of the home.
The case remained unsolved for more than a decade until Lt. Kyle Clark of the Maryland State Police Homicide Unit re-opened the investigation and developed additional information.