ELLICOTT CITY, Md. — Josh Everett and Jeremy Hall would spend weekends having barbecue with two of their best friends. But, Rane Dellinger and Jacob Mauer will never be able to hang out with them again.
“Playing with a gun, especially playing with a loaded gun, shouldn’t have been doing that. It doesn’t make them bad people. It was definitely an accident the way it happened. There’s no way Rane could or ever would murder his best friend or anyone for that matter,” said Jeremy Hall.
Dellinger is charged with first and second-degree murder among other charges. Police say the victim and suspect were sitting in a car behind a building doing drugs when Dellinger shot and killed Mauer.
Dellinger was arrested in North Carolina nearly 30 hours after he ran from the scene. Hall has been friends with both of the men since ninth grade. He called them two of the best souls he'd ever met and says they were inseparable.
“I saw Jacob four hours before this happened, and he was literally telling me this story about how Rane was driving somewhere and he ran out of gas. Jacob, wherever he was, left what he was doing, drove to pick up Rane, took him to the gas station to get gas, drove him back to his car to refill his car and just did that for him out of the goodness of his heart,” said Hall.
Everett had become really close to Hall over the last years.
“Where I lived we had a bunch of kids in the house, and he was always really good with the kids,” said Everett.
He says he had warned Hall about the kind of stuff he was doing, but he says he'd never purposefully kill his best friend.
“I took it as kind of like a wake up call, not only for me but for like other people who I know are in kind of like his same situation, like not exactly but you know what I mean,” said Everett.
They'll never hear Mauer's signature laugh again. Two friends gone, who aren't coming back for very different reasons.
