19-Year-Old Who Shot Dearborn Mall Shooter After He Killed One Man and Wounded Another Sentenced to Two Years Probation for Carrying Without a Permit

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DEARBORN, MI — The 19-year-old who shot and killed a man firing a gun inside Fairlane Town Center on July 3 has been sentenced to two years of probation. Not for the shooting. For carrying the gun he used to stop it without a license.

Martinez Long of Oak Park stood before a judge Tuesday on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon, as reported by FOX 2 Detroit. The shooting itself was never treated as the crime.

Police were called to the mall at 1:25 p.m. Cameron Watkins had gotten into a fight with Keonte Seaborn. Watkins shot Seaborn and killed him. He shot a second person during a struggle. He kept firing inside the mall. Long shot Watkins, and the shooting stopped. Three people were hit that afternoon and two of them died.

Watkins had already killed one man, wounded another, and was still pulling the trigger in a crowded mall when Long fired. The judge said as much from the bench. “I know there was a gun fight at the Fairlane mall, and the lawyers have agreed, according to this court’s evaluation, that you were acting in self-defense or the defense of others, so that’s a valid legal defense,” he said. Then he asked the question the whole hearing turned on: “Why did you walk into the mall with a gun in the first place?”

The judge did not let go of it. “Fortunately, you weren’t injured, but nonetheless, you had a gun there in the first place, which was poor judgment,” he told Long. “And what do you need a gun for protection in a mall, in the first place?” He answered his own question a few minutes earlier when he described a gun fight at the Fairlane mall. Long walked into a place where a man would shoot two people, and he was the one who ended it.

Long’s attorney conceded the carry charge and called the shooting a tragic incident. “He didn’t plan on using it that day. He thought he kept it for protection,” she said. “He didn’t instigate the fight. He didn’t start the fight, and he did pull it out for protection of others.” Long did not speak in court. His attorney said that was because of a potential civil liability case. A criminal court accepting your self-defense claim does not close the door on a lawsuit, and his lawyer was protecting him from the next one.

Michigan requires a concealed pistol license to carry a concealed handgun, and the state does not issue one to anyone under 21. At 19, Long had no legal path to carry the gun he used. The Michigan concealed carry laws did not care that the gun saved lives that day. The law cared that it was in his waistband without a license, and the court treated it exactly that way.

Now put the same 19-year-old in a constitutional carry state, one that lets law-abiding adults carry a handgun without a permit, and one whose law covers adults 18 to 20. The carrying-a-concealed-weapon count does not exist. There is no plea agreement, no probation, no therapy order, no two years without a gun, and no judge asking why he had it. The only question left is whether the shooting was justified, and this court already answered that. Everything Long is serving right now is the product of Michigan drawing the line at 21 and requiring a license to cross it. Move the same facts a state line away and Tuesday’s hearing never happens.

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The sentence is two years of probation with conditions. Long must complete cognitive behavioral therapy, take handgun safety classes offered by the court, and possess no guns or ammunition for the length of the probation. The case was handled under Michigan’s Holmes Youthful Trainee Act, a program for young offenders. Long had no prior criminal record and is working toward his GED. “Nonetheless, I think this agreement is in the best interest of justice,” the judge said.

Two men died at Fairlane Town Center that afternoon. One of them was killed by the man he was fighting. The other was killing people when a 19-year-old shot him. The court called that self-defense. It also took his right to carry a gun away for two years because he never had it legally in the first place. The mindset lesson here is not about whether to carry in a mall. It is that carrying outside the law puts you in front of a judge even when you did everything else right, and where that line sits depends entirely on the state you are standing in.