Man pleads guilty to murder for role in 2020 shooting of woman outside North Dallas home

The accused getaway driver in the attempted carjacking and killing of a 59-year-old woman outside her North Dallas home pleaded guilty to murder last week, according to court records.

Deng Chan Ajack, 22, was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the fatal shooting of Leslie Squair Baker on Memorial Day 2020, court documents show. Ajack was indicted for capital murder but pleaded to the lesser charge.

Ajack was also sentenced to 50 years in prison for an unrelated 2019 aggravated robbery charge, for which he was serving deferred adjudication probation at the time of Baker’s killing. The two sentences will run concurrently, according to court records.

Prosecutors sought to have Ajack’s probation revoked after his arrest in connection with Baker’s death, and state District Judge Raquel “Rocky” Jones ruled last week that Ajack violated his probation as an alleged accomplice to the shooting, his defense attorney Hugo Aguilar said. The burden of proof for whether someone violated their probation is lower than in a criminal case, according to Aguilar.

A spokeswoman for the Dallas County district attorney’s office declined to comment.

A jury found Anthony Jermaine Lewis guilty of capital murder in September for fatally shooting Baker, and he was automatically sentenced to life in prison last year. Lewis, who was 16 at the time of the killing, will be eligible for parole after serving 40 years.

A third man, Antony Isaiah Taylor, also is charged with capital murder in connection with the shooting. According to court records, Taylor is due in court for a hearing Thursday.

Baker was found wounded in the driver’s seat of a car about 5 p.m. on May 25, 2020, in the 6100 block of Royalton Drive, a residential area northeast of Royal Lane and Preston Road. She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead a half hour later.

According to an arrest-warrant affidavit, Taylor told police Lewis was carrying a gun and decided to carjack Baker after he saw her pull into her driveway. Surveillance video showed a silver sedan blocking the driveway. Before she was shot, Baker, who was on the phone, yelled that she was being robbed. The car then sped off.

Taylor, then 18, told police Lewis got out of the car and he heard gunfire from the sedan while Ajack, then 19, moved to the driver’s seat, according to the affidavit.

At the time of the shooting, then-Dallas police Chief U. Reneé Hall said, “It hurts to know that a child has committed such a heinous act, so now there’s two lives lost.” District Attorney John Creuzot previously said the case was among the reasons his office sought a study of the county’s juvenile justice system.

Baker was director of marketing at Texas Health Center for Diagnostics & Surgery and devoted her time to a host of philanthropic organizations. She was known to her friends and family as endlessly thoughtful, honest and generous.